Household organization

r&

m Afroylft

Bi

Lp

APrt 10
H SEP 7

ii

JAN 28 6

(/ Dst/i*^'

HOUSEHOLD ORGANIZATION.

BY

MRS. CADDY.

//

" From my tutor I learnt endurance of labour, and to want little, and
to work with my own hands." — Emperor Marcus Aurelius.

. >' j i . ,

\_ - i, \ • . : . ■

LONDON :
CHAPMAN AND HALL, 193, PICCADILLY.

1877.

10

G

* » .

» • . '

> • •
0 *»«

'- ■ * * 4 .

* • »

S •

PREFACE.

One fine August bank-holiday many thoughts,
more or less connected with the day, prompted me
to write this essay, so forcibly did it appear that
people required help to make their lives easier and
happier.

Since then there have been several bank-holi-
days ; and though trade is depressed throughout
the country, though financial panic has ruined
thousands, yet the demand for beer, spirits, and
tobacco is as great as ever ; the hollow gaieties
of life are as noisy as ever — perhaps the more so for
being more hollow ; still our most precious friends
kill themselves with overwork — mental pulveriza-
tion. If they eased their minds by employing their
hands they might yet live, even though many could
not, last autumn, afford to buy the breath of sea or

vi Preface.

mountain air which would have strengthened them
for the burdens of the new year. Those who were
wise and who had capital invested it in health, that
being likely to bring them in the best return.

We have had seven years of the highest national
prosperity. Although fictitious, it gave us pleasure
while it lasted, and we were able to enjoy all that
life has to offer in its perfection. We may be
going to pass through seven years of dearth, so we
must husband our resources of health and wealth,
instead of drawing upon them in the reckless way
we have lately accustomed ourselves to do. Some
years of scarcity may be a blessing to us all, if
they lead us back from the habits of excess and
idleness we have fallen into, and particularly the
craving for excitement, whether in the form of
literature, or by means of stimulants and cordials
(absinthe).

A plain but short statement of our national
losses will show the necessity of economizing
the goods we still possess, financial as well as
physical.

Independent of the stagnation of trade which

Preface. vii

paralyzes every branch of our commerce, we have
lately had losses through foreign loans more severe
than any we have experienced during the present
century.

Since the announcement by Turkey in October,
1875, that the interest on the Turkish debt would
be reduced, there has been a great fall in foreign
stocks. The debt of Turkey — roughly speak-
ing, £200,000,000 — has fallen, say, £125,000,000
in value. Egyptian securities, not including
the floating debt, approximately estimated at
£60,000,000, have fallen some £20,000,000 in
value. In smaller stocks the fall has probably
been some £20,000,000 ; and since the breaking
out of the Eastern Question, Russian stocks, at
an aggregate of about £165,000,000, have fallen
12 per cent., or a sum equal to more than
£20,000,000 sterling.

Besides these calamities there have been in
England, as shown by a recent return, 1,797
commercial failures, representing liabilities of
£30,000,000 sterling, and it has been calculated
that of the firms and persons occupied in business,

viii Preface.

3 per cent, have been unable to meet their engage-
ments.

These losses will account for less familiar faces
being seen in the Park in the season, for the
numerous houses unlet in fashionable quarters,
for grouse-moors going almost begging ; and,
among many other significant facts, Tattersall,
who generally has 150 applications for coachmen
on his books, has now 150 coachmen applying
to him for situations.

In our present abundance of money, through
dearth of safe investments, many persons have
purchased art treasures ; which would be wise,
but for the pain it always causes to part with
things that have once adorned our homes, which
makes this not a happy speculation.

It would be the part of a screech-owl to cry
Woe ! woe ! and hoot triumphantly over the dis-
tresses of our country ; but there seems so much
of hope and promise in the fact of our meeting
reverses of fortune with courage, that we cannot
feel that a real disaster has overtaken us. We
have in the case of France an example of how

Preface. ix

a great nation can rise renewed in strength out
of overwhelming troubles, and our trial is less
severe than that of France.

It is not good for any people to sit down to eat
and drink and rise up to play, any more than it is
good for children to feed upon delicacies in lieu of
simple fare. Persons suddenly reduced from afflu-
ence to comparative poverty may be glad of a few
hints to show them how happiness and refinement
are by no means incompatible with a smaller con-
dition of fortune, with a shorter purse ; for, after
all, the purse is not the pleasure, it only helps us to
procure it ; our own taste and feeling must teach
us what true pleasure is.

It may be demurred that some of the household
improvements suggested in this book would be
expensive to carry out — such, for instance, as the
arrangement of the kitchen ; and this is true : but
looked at as an investment, they would yield large
interest, and it might be prudent to invest under
one's own eye, in one's own house, some of the
capital we cannot afford to sink. If used in econo-
mizing wages, it will give us a profitable return.

x Preface.

We do not hesitate to lay out money in improve-
ments on our farms. Why, then, need we fear to
arrange our dwellings in accordance with principles
of true economy, so that the ladies of our families
may be able to co-operate with us in advancing
the benefit of all ? Every family might be its own
Economical Housekeeping Company (Limited),
comprising in itself its shareholders and board of
directors, realizing cent, per cent, for its money,
because ^"200 a year would go as far as ^"400.

If we save the money we now spend upon keep-
ing" servants to do our work for us, we shall have
more to spend on our holidays, and so shall feel all
the more refreshed by our respite from work.

Much is said in this book about superfluities,
but although some passages may seem to give
colour to such an idea, it is by no means wished to
convey the recommendation that our homes and
lives are to be bare of beauty. On the contrary,
I hanker after profusion and love plenty, but wish
them to be placed where they will not give more
labour than pleasure, where they will not hamper
our every movement at every moment, making us

Preface. xi

ever wear a sort of moral tight kid-gloves, be the
weather hot or cold.

The rock which theories split upon is that they
generally presuppose that we can make our lives,
and are in independent position and good circum-
stances, whereas this is seldom the case. The
majority of us are neither in good circumstances
nor independent : often we have had no control
over the purchase of our very furniture ; so we must
make the best of what we have, only, when we
have the opportunity of making a change, let it be
a reform as well as a change. My main object in
writing this essay has been to show how frequently,
and in how short a time, the saving effected by a
reform covers the cost of carrying it out.

In the case of young couples about to marry,
and beginning to plan their lives, any work will be
good which aids them to lay down their plans
according to rules of economy and common sense.

January, 1877.

CONTENTS

THE DIFFICULTY.

PAGE

Impossibility of getting good servants — Over-civilization —
Labour has been made hideous — Sleeping partnership —
Wealth exempt from this difficulty — Refinement of the
professional class — Credit — Phase of insecurity and scarcity
— Sweet are the uses of adversity — English people do not
fear work — Servants too readily changed — Wilfulness of
servants — Upper servants are easily obtained — Servants feel
the pressure of the times — Ornamental servants costly
luxuries — Two questions — Work must be efficiently done —
Woman's work — Misuse of time — We keep servants to
wait upon each other — Idleness — Pleasure made a toil ... i

THE REMEDY.

Bad habits to be reformed— Late hours — Value of the long
winter evenings — Simplicity of manners — Over-carefulness
— Instruction to be gained from foreign nations — Our
manners should be natural — Impedimenta in our households
— Comparison of former times with our own — Children
trained to habits of consideration— Young men and boys
over-indulged — Reduction of establishments — Lady-helps —

xiv Contents.

PAGE

What is menial work?— Picturesque occupation — What is
lady-like — Amateur millinery— Two subjects for an artist —
Taste — Plan of the book— Eugenie de Guerin ... ... 20

THE ENTRANCE-HALL.

The evil of side doors— Difficulties with cooks— Who is to
answer the door? — Four classes of applicants — Arrange-
ments for tradespeople— Visitors— Furniture of the hall-
Warming the passages — Dirt and door-mats — The door-step
— Charwomen ... ... , ... ... ... 40

BREAKFAST.

Lighting gas-fire— Difficulty of rousing servants— Family break-
fast— Cooking omelet — Hours of work and enjoyment-
Duties of mothers and householders — What is included in
six hours' daily work— Clearing away the breakfast— Bowl
for washing the vaisselle— Ornamented tea-cloths— Muslin
cap worn while dusting— Use of feather-brush— Cleaning
windows — Advantages of gas-fire ... ... ... 54

THE KITCHEN.

Parisian markets— No refuse food brought into a house—
Catering in London— Cooking-stoves— Pretty kitchen-
Underground kitchens objectionable— Kitchen level with
the street door— Larder and store-room— The dresser-
Kitchen in the Swiss style— Herbs in the window— Hygienic
value of aromatic plants— Polished sink— Earthenware scrap-
dish— Nothing but ashes in dust-bin— Soap-dish— Plate-
rack — Kitchen cloths — Few cleaning materials necessary

Hand work better than machine work— Washing at home
—Knife-cleaning— Fuel-box— No work in the kitchen unfit
for a lady to do ... ... ... 53

Contents. xv

THE LADY-HELP.

PAGE

True position of a lady-help — Division of work in a family —
The mother the best teacher — Marketing — Young lady-helps
— Luncheon — Early dinners for children— Recreation — Pre-
paring the late dinner — Evening tea — The lady-help a
gentlewoman — Her assistance at breakfast — Her spare time
— 1 act ... ... ... ... ... ... oo

THE DINING-ROOM.

Carpets and curtains — Picture hanging and frames — Distemper
colouring for cornices — Oval dining-table — Sideboard for
breakfast service — Beauty of English porcelain — A London
dining-room — Giulio Romano's banquet — Growing plants —
The large sideboard — Dinner-service — Styles of dinner —
Food in due season — Gracefulness of flowers and fruits —
Fresh fruit better than preserves — Communication between
kitchen and dining-room — Remarks on plate — Table decora-
tions ... ... ... ... ... ... 10

j

THE DRAWING-ROOM.

Social pressure — Agreeable evening parties — Troubles of party-
giving — Musical parties — Flowers on a balcony — Window-
gardening — Crowded drawing-rooms — The library or study
— Gas, candles, and candlesticks — Original outlay on furni-
ture — Different styles of furniture — Raffaelesque decorations
— Carpets, curtains, and chair coverings — Portieres — Win-
dow blinds — Rugs — Care required in buying furniture —
Ornaments — Dusting — Chiffoniers useless — Portfolio stand
— Mirrors ... ... ... ... ... 127

xvi Contents.

BED AND DRESSING ROOMS.

PAGE

Ventilation — Window curtains and blinds — Bedsteads — Spring
mattresses — Towels — Danger of fire at the toilet — Mantel-
piece — Pictures and frames — Superfluous necessaries —
Taine's criticisms — Aids to reading in bed — Service of the
bath — Improvements in washstands — Arranging the rooms
— Attics made beautiful — Sick-rooms — Neatness — Disinfec-
tants— Chlorine gas — Condy's solution — Filters — Invalid
chairs — Generous efforts of the medical profession to improve
the national health ... ... ... ... ... 155

THE EDUCATION OF GIRLS.

To what age should boys' and girls' education be alike? —
Accomplishments fruitlessly taught — Nursery and school-
room government — Helplessness — Introduction to society—
The convent system — Unhappy results — Scientific education
— Geometrical illustration — Religion — Professional life for
women — Home training — Varied knowledge — Companion-
ship of a mother — Experience — Kindness — Truth ... 182

SUNDAY.

Children's Sundays made wearisome — Sunday precious to
workers — Moral workers — Moral vices — Our gifts — Misuse
of them — Necessary work on Sunday — Diminished by
management — Sunday prevents us living too fast — The rest
must be earned — Sunday repairs the human machine ... 202

HOUSEHOLD ORGANIZATION.

-+o+-

THE DIFFICULTY.

Impossibility of getting good servants — Over-civilization — Labour
has been made hideous — Sleeping partnership — Wealth exempt
from this difficulty — Refinement of the professional class — Credit
— Phase of insecurity and scarcity — Sweet are the uses of
adversity — English people do not fear work — Servants too
readily changed — Wilfulness of servants — Upper servants are
easily obtained — Servants feel the pressure of the times — Orna-
mental servants costly luxuries — Two questions — Work must
be efficiently done — Woman's work — Misuse of time — We keep
servants to wait upon each other — Idleness — Pleasure made
a toil.

FOR a long time past we, the middle-classes of
England, have felt a great household perplexity,
one which has been a daily burden to us all. This
is the difficulty, almost impossibility, of getting
good servants.

B

Household Organization.

Machinery, though it has lightened other
branches of labour and cheapened production, has
not helped us much here. Social science has been
deeply studied, but nothing practical has yet
been brought to bear upon this vexed question.
The theories are good, the projected reforms better ;
but so far there is nothing that people of average
intellect, and moderate income, can take hold of
and apply to their own case. During the late
plethora of wealth throughout the nation, we have
so multiplied our wants, and so refined upon the
ruder social ideas of the early part of the century,
that our servants have not been able to keep pace
with our requirements ; and notwithstanding that
the lower orders have much more careful education
than they had formerly, it seems to be of a sort
which makes them discontented with their work,
rather than instructing them how to do it better.

In fact, we have degraded labour by making it
hideous, by pushing it into holes and corners, by
shrinking from it ourselves, and casting it entirely
into the hands of the lower orders ; until we English
are virtually divided into a contemplative and a

The Difficulty.

working class. This would be all very well if it
were true that our class could afford to pay liberally
for work done well ; but, in effect, the majority of
those who wish to be relieved from work cannot
pay liberally for hired labour, neither can the bulk
of the labouring class perform their part of the
bargain in a manner deserving liberal payment.

We have tried to keep ourselves as sleeping
partners in the domestic concern ; we have derived
profit from our money invested in service, and we
find that this is no longer a profitable investment.
There is a large wealthy order exempt from these
difficulties. By having ample means of recompense,
it has the flower of service at its command, and
the domestic economy of the mansions of England
is perfect. Under steward and housekeeper, this
may be compared to the beautiful system seen on
board a large ship of war, for discipline, routine,
and celerity of service. In both instances the
reverse of the shield shows the injurious effects on
the lower ranks of a large proportion of unoccupied
time, spent in merely waiting for their hours of
duty.

Household Organization.

The suggestions I have to offer are not required
by this wealthy class — the upper ten thousand, as
they are popularly called, whose incomes range
among the four and five figures ; but help seems
to be much needed by the upper twice ten hundred
thousand who have incomes described by three
figures, and who yet, by good birth, breeding, and
education, form the backbone of England ; whose
boys, though only home-boarders at Eton, Harrow,
and Rugby, fill all the other large schools of Great
Britain, and whose daughters are the flowers of
our land.

Of late years England has been passing through
a period of unexampled prosperity, so much so as
to make the customs of wealth a familiar habit
with even those who only possess a competence.
To them the domestic difficulty is very great, since
they exact from inferior servants the quality of
service that can only be obtained from the best
trained of their order. This occasions disappoint-
ment and irritation. The people whose means are
inadequate to the gratification of their tastes
belong mainly to the professional classes, whose

The Difficulty.

brain-work most demands repose at home ; yet
these are, beyond all others, perplexed by the
increasing toils and troubles of home life. They
find that a struggle which should be peace, and so
the whole machinery of their lives is thrown out
of gear.

This upper working-class is so occupied by
endeavours to make the fortune, or, if not fortune,
at any rate to make both ends meet — which has
been denied them by birth or accident — that they
have no time nor energy left to think these things
out for themselves. So they go on bearing the
yearly increasing load piled upon them by the
tyranny of fashion, of custom, or by their wish to
keep up their credit in the eyes of the world ; for
their credit is in many cases their fortune, and it
must be upheld at any sacrifice. A question occurs
to many: Is this credit best maintained by out-
ward appearances, or is it more firmly secured by
seeming strong enough to dispense with artificial
support ? And, again, Is our money credit the best
we can have ?

A man of known wealth may go about in a

Household Organization.

shabby coat, a countess may wear a cheap bonnet,
a Sidonia may dine off bread and cheese. If
Gladstone fells trees, he is still Gladstone ; if
Ruskin grubs up a wood, he is still a great poet.

Without becoming mere dilettanti, may we not
enjoy a reputation for taste, and so allow our-
selves to be heedless of a few of the conventional
proprieties of life ; as a tree rises above the level of
the grass ? May we not strive, by the culture of
our manners and discourse, to make our simpler
social entertainments as highly prized as the feasts
of our richer neighbours ? The years of prosperity
have passed away, and we seem to have entered
upon a phase of society when scarcity and
insecurity overwhelm or threaten us all ; when
the wealth of yesterday has crumbled into dust,
the paper money shrivelled as if it had been burnt.
We still have the same high culture, the tastes
and feelings of yesterday ; and unfortunately, the
same habits of Idleness, Helplessness, Waste, and
Luxury.

These are hard charges to bring against the cream
of a nation which for centuries has held its own

The Difficulty.

by its energy, abundance of resource, strength of
character, and scorn of effeminacy ; but it is im-
possible to deny that these characteristics of the
British race have been much less strongly marked
of late years. Still, these things are in our nature,
and we must not weakly let ourselves decline from
our former high standard.

Let us, at the outset of our adversity, meet our
altered circumstances with the strength of mind
and wisdom befitting English people. Although
wealth may be taken from us, we have our educa-
tion and energy left, which, if properly used, will
not allow us to sink into a lower condition than we
have hitherto enjoyed ; and while we hold our
ground we shall strengthen our health, develop
our ability, and increase our happiness.

Let us, the women of England, encourage and
support the' men in an endeavour to return to
simplicity of life, to a more manly condition ; call
it Spartan, Roman, republican, what you will, it is,
in fact, the training of soul and body. We have
had a long holiday ; let us return to school with
renewed vigour. We women have been much to

8 Household Organization.

blame for the degeneracy which has been felt of
late. If men trifle away their time and health
upon tobacco, women are foolishly helpless, and
they permit their dependants to be wantonly
wasteful. Both men and women pass the best hours
of daylight in their beds, and make their meals
the important event of their days.

Englishmen abroad do not mind work — indeed,
they may be said to love it — and never since the
days of Drake have they felt it to be a degra-
dation. He said " he would like to see the gentle-
man that would not set his hand to a rope and
hale and draw with the mariners ; ' and herein
the English differ from continental nations. But
in England they let their love of bodily exertion
have its scope almost exclusively in their games.
Nor do Englishwomen in the Colonies shrink from
work, and they are never in the least ashamed
of it. You hear them talk quite freely of how
Colonel So-and-so called in the morning while they
were " stuffing the veal," to ask for the two first
dances at the ball at Government House in the
evening.

The Difficulty.

It seems to be only in England that we dread
to be seen doing anything useful. And unless we
soon cast off this fear we shall be condemned to
the deadly-liveliness of Hotel Companies (Lim-
ited), with their uninteresting routine ; for the
supply of servants not being forthcoming at our
price, we must of necessity be reduced to this
levelling American system, which will flatten all
individuality out of us.

One cause of the ever-increasing difficulty of
holding a staff of servants well in hand is that our
connection with them is too easily changed or
dissolved at pleasure. We should bear ourselves
very differently towards each other if we knew we
were compelled to live together during even one
year certain. As the case now is, we do not get
to know each other, and a small trial of temper on
either side is the prelude to a change. The old
patriarchal feeling of considering the servants as
members of the family has quite died out, and
so their relation to us has become confused. At
times we rate them with the tradespeople who
come periodically to polish our bright stoves, clean

io Household Organization.

our chandeliers, and wind our clocks, and so we
only care whether they do their specified work well
or ill, taking no further trouble about them ; some-
times we treat them as the horses which draw our
carriage, and see that they are well fed accordingly;
and sometimes we look upon them as machines
merely.

We hear it said, servants do not take the interest
in their places that theyused to do ; they are ready
to leave you on the smallest provocation ; they will
not be told how to do any particular thing ; they
have their way, and if you do not like it, well,
they think your place will not suit them. In-
deed, one of the most docile and obliging among
the servants I have known, on differing with his
employer about some work in which he was en-
gaged, said, " Well, I'll do it a little bit your way,
and a little bit my way ; and that will be fair, won't
it, mum ? "

It is easy enough to get servants of the superior
grades — ladies'-maids, parlour-maids, and even
house-maids, where two footmen are kept ; but is
there such a being as a really good plain cook,

The Difficulty. 1 1

or has a servant-of-all-work been heard of lately ?
Although it is truly said that servants them-
selves are beginning to feel the pressure of the
times, this is not from their actual losses by money-
market panics, but from the fact that many domes-
tics are out of place on account of those families
who have met with losses dispensing with un-
necessary assistance. But that does not ease our
case, for we are none the less helpless and de-
pendent. Although many upper servants are out
of place, this does not make them seek our situa-
tions ; and if they did so, they wrould do us a
positive injury by bringing into our houses the
habits of wealthier families. The reduction of
wages, and lack of suitable situations in England,
will cause these unemployed servants to seek in
emigration the high wages they are still secure of
in the Colonies, or in America. There they will
be a godsend, and they may reasonably look for-
ward to establishing themselves permanently and
happily.

Independently of the collapse of foreign securi-
ties and the general depression of trade, the in-

12 Household Organization.

creased cost of all necessaries makes it impossible
to many of us to allow ourselves luxuries, of which
the most costly are ornamental servants ; and the
difficulty of obtaining any others makes it incum-
bent on us to put our own shoulders to the wheel,
and try by diligent self-help to solve some of the
problems which so miserably defy us to find a
practical answer.

In this consideration of the subject of domestic
work in middle-class households, I hope to show in
what way the mistress may be rendered more self-
reliant, and how the master's purse may be spared
the perpetual drain the present system entails upon
it at both ends, and from every mesh.

This is but a fraction of a vast subject, yet it is
in itself so large, and stretches out into such a
variety of kindred topics, that it is difficult to com-
press it into a form small enough to be easily
handled, and still more difficult to make sugges-
tions of reform generally palatable, since many
vanities must be hurt by a proposal to reduce
establishments, and sensitive feelings wounded by
the bluntness of two direct practical questions —

The Difficulty. 13

1st. Must the great majority of our young ladies
be elegant superfluities ?

2nd. Must we keep many servants to wait upon
each other ?

These questions I hope to answer usefully in the
following pages.

We must begin with the understanding that in
every house there is work to be done, and that
somebody must do it. Our aim will be to reduce
its compass, and to do what remains in the
cheapest and pleasantest way. But it must be
efficiently done, which is seldom the case when
young ladies play at housekeeping, which too often
means giving out the pepper, and such like. We
have long shrunk from allowing our women to
work at all. Husbands and fathers have taken a
pride in keeping the ladies of their households in
that state of ease that no call need be made on
them to lift a finger in the way of useful work ;
so that if reverses befal them, their condition is
deplorable indeed.

Now we are turning round and insisting upon
every woman being able to support herself by her

14 Household Organization.

own exertions. Though a great part of woman's

natural work has been taken out of her hands by

machinery, this, which is mainly the preparation

of clothing, was the occupation of her uncultivated

leisure, and did no more than fill up the time which

we now devote to culture. By retreating from our

active household duties we now divide our time

between culture and idleness, or the union of both

in novel-reading.

For many years conscientious teachers tried to

drive us to household work by calling it our duty :

a dull name, sternly forbidding us to find pleasure

or interest therein. It was a moral dose of physic,

salutary but disagreeable. In the same way we

were taught to make shirts and mend stockings,

but an evening dress was held to be frivolity.

Taste was discouraged, and beauty driven out of

our work ; no wonder, then, that the young and

careless shunned it altogether, and threw as much

of it as they could into the hands of hirelings. Is

there no way of teaching duty without making it

repulsive by its dreariness and ugliness ?
«
Now that we pride ourselves upon being no

The Difficulty, 15

longer weak-minded and silly, let us exert our-
selves to act upon Lord Bacon's maxim, " Choose
the life that is most useful, and habit will make
it the most agreeable." We need not fear that
the routine of daily handiwork — which will become
interesting to us as we try to make it agreeable —
will interfere with our further intellectual culture.
And even should it do so, are not our leaders of
thought beginning to perceive that manual labour
is more commercially valuable than mental labour ;
that the demand for the former is greater as the
supply becomes perceptibly less ? The deadness
of machine work causes us to prize the spirited
and varied touch that can only be imparted by
the hand. Every woman, among her acquaintance,
knows some one who is a skilful, energetic manager
of her house, and yet whose reading and accom-
plishments are above the average. Indeed, as I
heard one of my friends of this stamp say, when
asked how she found time for so much sketching
from nature, " One always finds time for what one
likes to do."

We see what priceless possessions we lose by our

1 6 Household Organization.

misuse of time, or waste of it in inanities, when
we look at the embroideries and other work of our
ancestresses, and compare these with the poor
results of our months and years. We see splen-
did embroideries of the time of Titian, with the
needlework still strong enough to outlast all our
nonsense in " leviathan stitch ' and " railroad
stitch ; " and old lace, by the side of which our
work of mingling woven braids and crochet in
such a manner as to get most show for the least
cost of taste, labour, and invention, is worth
nothing at all.

With regard to my second question — Must we
keep many servants to wait upon each other ? — I
will here make one observation.

The heaviest part of the work of a cook and
kitchen-maid consists in preparing the kitchen
meals. Six servants require as many potatoes
peeled, and as many plates, knives, forks, etc.,
cleaned, as six ladies and gentlemen. Mul-
tiply their five meals a day by six, and you will
find that there are thirty plates, knives, forks
spoons, cups or glasses, and many other things,

The Difficulty. i 7

to be laid on the table, used, washed, and put
away again, at a computation of only one plate
to each meal.

Think of the time alone consumed in this, and
the breakage ; and this merely in the meals.

I am not considering the houses which require a
complement of ten servants to keep their machi-
nery in motion, as these do not form part of my
subject ; but this slight calculation will enable us
to form some estimate of the cost of maintaining

a large retinue.

We may well ask why we have drifted into this

enormous expenditure, and for what purpose we

have gradually let our houses be filled up by a

greedy and destructive class, who, notwithstanding

many bright exceptions, seem to combine the

vices of dirt, disorder, extravagance, disobedience,

and insolence. Why, indeed ? For this simple

reason, that we are idle. Gloss it over as we may,

by calling it a desire to secure time for higher ends,

the truth remains the same ; we have neglected

our duty in order that we may live in idleness

and devote ourselves to pleasure. But if our lives

c

1 8 Household- Organization.

are to be spent in pleasure, we shall ourselves
degenerate; for pleasure wears out the body more
than work, and excitement more than both. Let
us take our appointed burden of steady work, and
bear it onwards cheerfully and patiently. By
so doing we shall feel it grow gradually lighter.
It is not such slavery as the oar to which we chain
ourselves. The artificial strain on our lives must
be kept up by stimulants, and idleness must be
roused by excitement. But our routine of gaiety
is no idleness ; and as for its name — gaiety — there
never was a term more false. The gaiety is a
hollow mockery, masking fatigue, untruth, and
disappointment.

Sidney Smith says, " One of the greatest plea-
sures of our lives is conversation/' If we will
simply allow ourselves to talk upon subjects of
common interest, we shall find social gatherings
less wearisome than when we have to manufacture
small-talk for civility's sake alone. If we meet
together for enjoyment instead of for display, we
shall replace dissipation — mere dissipation of time
(what an endeavour for mortals, whose time is

The Difficulty. 19

their life !) — by gaiety of heart, which is the best
restorative to wearied spirits.

Let us Englishwomen make a strong effort to
rescue ourselves from this bondage, this constant
drain on our resources ; and, leaving to men the
duty to the state, let us seek our work in what
is our duty — the rule and guidance of the house,
securing, as Ruskin says, " its order, comfort, and
loveliness."

But especially must we insist upon its loveliness,
which is the point most neglected in all that por-
tion of our lives which does not lie immediately
upon the surface.

20 Household Organization.

THE REMEDY.

Bad habits to be reformed — Late hours — Value of the long winter
evenings — Simplicity of manners— Over-carefulness — Instruction
to be gained from foreign nations — Our manners should be
natural — Impedimenta in our households — Comparison of former
times with our own — Children trained to habits of consideration
— Young men and boys over-indulged— Reduction of establish-
ments— Lady helps — What is menial work ? — Picturesque occu-
pation— What is lady-like — Amateur millinery — Two subjects
for an artist — Taste— Plan of the book — Eugenie de Guerin.

BEFORE speaking of work which has to be done in
order to make our homes comfortable and beauti-
ful, it is necessary to point out what ought not to
be done.

We have fallen into one form of self-indulgence
which goes far towards unfitting us for work,
except under the stimulus of excitement. This
is our national habit of keeping late hours.

This is an important matter, and one wherein

The Remedy. 2 1

every member of every family may, if he pleases,
aid reform. This, unless we are printers, bakers,
or policemen, is entirely in our own hands.

Later hours are kept in England than in any
other part of the world, and they grow later and
later. We read in the life of the Prince Consort
how painfully he felt this difference between Eng-
land and Germany ; yet the latitude and climate of
the two countries differ but little, and we are of the
same race. It is merely a matter of custom.

Many persons pride themselves on breakfasting
at ten o'clock, and nine is thought quite an early
hour in comfortable houses. It is deemed aris-
tocratic to breakfast late, as well as to dine late ;
and as the day begun at ten o'clock would be too
short for people to have a probable chance of
sleep at ten at night, they are obliged to sit up till
after midnight. Thus the best hours of the day
are wasted, and the health of many injured by
remaining an unnecessary length of time in a gas
or paraffin laden atmosphere.

This shows an astonishing contrariety of disposi-
tion on the part of persons of refined sensations,

22 Household Organization.

so completely does it reverse the order of nature,
which gives us the early sunshine for our enjoy-
ment. Sunrise is the only beautiful natural spec-
tacle that we modern English do not care about,
except once or twice in our lives, when we get a
shivering glimpse of it from an altitude of many
thousand feet above the level of the sea.

From six to six is the natural day throughout
by far the largest half of the globe, and the nearer
we bring our practice to this measure the better ;
taking our day of sixteen hours (two-thirds of
the twenty-four) from six o'clock in the morning
instead of from nine. Old folks in the country ask
their young people what is the good of sitting up
burning out fire and candle. We never ask our-
selves this question in London. Many persons
take a nap after their heavy dinner, and only begin
to feel lively as the clock strikes ten. To these the
midnight oil is invigorating.

We have a valuable provision of nature in our
long winter evenings, reckoning them at from five
till ten. This gives us time for study, which we
need more than do southern nations, to learn to

The Remedy. 23

contend against our climate. The northern peoples
are famed for their mental culture : Scotland and
Iceland bear witness to this. This is the season,
too, for work in wool, to provide warm garments
which are not required in the south. The wise
woman does not fear the cold when her household
is clothed in scarlet. This is the time when we
may gather round the lamp or the fireside, and
draw closer the family links under the influence of
social warmth and progress.

Simplicity in our meals and dress is another
point in which we may unite economy of money,
time, and trouble, with comfort to ourselves and
a regard for the beautiful. We need not drift into
the carelessness of the picnic style of living, which
is but the parody of simplicity. The real picnic
is only suited to a few exceptional days in the
year, and these our holidays. We may have simple
meals indoors which should have all the freedom
of picnic without its inconveniences.

Do we not all remember Swiss breakfasts with
pleasure : the thyme-flavoured honey, and the
Alpine strawberries ? Or, better still, those at

24 Household Organization.

Athens, where the honey of Hymettus is nectar,
and the freshly made butter ambrosia ; and our
enjoyment of both was enhanced by the scent of
the orange blossoms coming in at the open
windows, and the sight of sunrise glowing on the
purple hills ? Or luncheons in Italy, under a
pergola of vines, where a melon, macaroni, a
basket of grapes, and a tricolour salad constituted
the feast ?*

These things dwell longer in our memories than
does the aldermanic banquet.

Although every faculty need not be swamped in
the gratification of the palate, our meals ought to
give us pleasure. It is only when they are made
of supreme importance that the satisfaction of a
healthy appetite degenerates into mere greed, and
what we call housekeeping means merely thinking
of dinner.

Simplicity allows play (not work) to our higher
faculties, which cannot be refreshed while we are
overwhelmed with domestic cares.

* The tricolour salad imitates the Italian banner — red, white, and
green. Green salad, beetroot, and cream, or white of egg whipped
to snow.

The Remedy. 25

" Martha was cumbered about," not with serving,
but with too much serving. Doubtless, in the ful-
ness of her hospitality, she tried to do too much,
and so she showed irritability. Our Lord's teach-
ing is always that there are good things prepared
for us, which we cannot attain if we are over-
careful and troubled about provision for the body.

There are roses in life for those who look for
roses, if they will but give themselves time to
gather them.

We may study with instruction and profit to
ourselves the daily habits of foreign nations, and
see where they fail, and also wherein they excel us.

M. Taine has put into words an observation
which must have occurred to all of us who have
travelled, how that " from England to France, and
from France to Italy, wants and preparations go
on diminishing. Life is more simple, and, if I may
say so, more naked, more given up to chance, less
encumbered with incommodious commodities."

From Italy we may go on to Arabia, and there
see how little is used to keep the body in health.
A woollen garment, warm enough to sleep in in

26 Household Organization.

the open air (we cannot say out of doors where
there are no doors), and thick enough to keep off
the scorching rays of the sun by day, and a thin
shawl for. the head, is all their clothing ; and the
simplest meal once a day seems to be enough to
keep them strong and active. Arabs have walked
or run by my horse during whole days in the heat
of the sun, and lived upon air until sundown,
when they seemed to eat nothing but a little
parched corn before stretching themselves down to
sleep. It is not customary, even among the upper
classes in Southern Europe and in the East, to
eat more than two meals a day.

Liebig tells us of the nutrition of plants from
the atmosphere : we may go further, and proclaim
the nutrition of man from the atmosphere. On
the moorland, on the mountain side, at sea, and
in the desert, I have over and over again felt its
feeding properties ; and we know that although we
are, in such circumstances, hungry for our meals,
we are not at all exhausted, nor do we want to feed
frequently.

As the leaves of a plant absorb the carbon in

The Remedy. 2 7

the air and give back the oxygen, so do we feed
upon the oxygen and return the nitrogen. But we
must have the oxygen. By our own present system
of frequent heavy meals we throw all the hard
work done by our bodies entirely upon the digestive
organs, and when these are exhausted with their
efforts, we feel faint, and mistakenly ply them with
stimulants and concentrated nourishment, until at
last they break down under their load.

But leaving the Arabs, who are types of a high
race in a natural (uneducated) condition, may we
not learn much from more civilized nations ?

Besides taking example by the early hours of the
Germans, we may imitate their industry, and, in our
studies, their thoroughness and diligence of research.

From the bright, elastic French people we may
(we women especially) copy their cheerfulness,
frugality, and their keen, clear-headed habits of
business. See how diligent they are at accounts,
how quick at estimates, in ways and means ; how
they sharpen their wit, until it shines and makes
their society sought as we in England seek a clever
book. The Frenchwoman works the machinery of

28 Household Organization.

her own house, goes into the market and fixes the
market-price of what she decides upon as suitable
to her purposes (she always has a purpose, this
Frenchwoman) ; she dresses herself and her chil-
dren with taste, and she glitters in society.

From the Spaniards we may learn, by the warn-
ing of a proud race, what it is to sink into the
scorn of other countries through smoking and debt.

From the Dutch we may learn cleanliness, from
the Swiss simplicity, and from the Italians to
foster our patriotism. Our American cousins are
part of our own family; they only differ from us
in having carried our virtues and some of our
follies into the superlative.

We should endeavour to be natural in all our
doings: to be ourselves, and not always acting a
part, and that generally the part of a person of
rank, or a millionaire. Let whatever we do be
openly done, though not obtrusively nor boast-
fully ; and this whether it is ornamental or only
useful. To be truly ornamental it must combine
utility. Is not the flower as useful as the leaf?

As an example of what I mean, I will give two

The Remedy. 29

opposite instances. A young lady was making the
bodice of a dress when a visitor called ; she quickly
pushed the work under a sofa pillow, and caught
up a gold-braided smoking-cap, half worked at the
shop, which had lasted a long time as a piece of
show-needlework.

The other case is that of a lady who set up for
an example to her sex, and always displayed, as a
manifestation of superiority, a basket full of gentle-
men's stockings, which she seemed to be ever
mending. Both of these ladies were acting a part.

Good taste has no false shame ; so we need not
add the vexations of concealment to the accumula-
tion of cares we have heaped upon our houses, till
they are so encumbered with impedimenta of all
kinds that our whole strength is taken to keep
them in order, and the household machine has to
move through such a mass of difficulties that it is
like a loaded carriage lumbering through a Turkish
road. Why should we add these things to life ?

We are daily bringing mechanism to greater
perfection, and it is our own fault that we do not
make it perform for our houses what Manchester

30 Household Organization.

has made it do for our looms, and render ourselves
mistresses in reality, instead of merely in name, of
our own households.

If we had to go back to the old flint-and-tinder-
box days, when it was an hour's hard work in the
dark to strike a light, when gas was unknown, when
water was not laid on, when all bread must be
made at home, all stockings knitted ; when there
was no such thing as a ready made shirt, much less
gowns and polonaises ; no perambulators, nor
washing machines ; — we should not heap upon
ourselves superfluous work in the thoughtless way
we do at present, and then leave all to the attention
of the most careless and irresponsible members of
the community.

In a small family there is less work to be done ;
in a large one there are more hands to do the work,
and many hands make light labour.

We would have no mistress of a family a house-
hold drudge, while her daughters lounge over fancy-
work or a novel ; but we would ease her hands,
and uphold her in her true position of adminis-
tratrix, mainspring, guiding star of the home.

The Remedy. 3 1

Modern educational pressure causes too many of
us to indulge our children, and release them from
every personal duty. They must have time and
quiet for their studies, and so they are allowed to
become selfish, and to think that everything must
give way to their mental improvement. Whereas
we should train them to give as little trouble as
possible ; and by good management, or by sacrifices,
such as getting up earlier, to do at least the extra
work appertaining to their individual enjoyment.
Why should they, for instance, require hot water
brought to their rooms several times a day ? Their
grandparents used cold, and it was better for
them. Why must girls have their hair brushed and
braided for them ? Why must their lost gloves be
found for them, and their wardrobes tidily arranged
for them to throw into confusion in their hurry ?

Boys, especially, are so seldom trained to habits
of consideration, that a young man in a house
gives at least twice the trouble that his father does.
Boys ring bells with intense heedlessness of its
being some one's journey — oftener four journeys —
to answer them. They make their boots unneces-

32 Household Organization.

sarily dirty, and their other clothes also ; while the
extra baths on football days, and the cleansing of
the white garments, make many mothers wish the
noble game were not so popular ; and to sweep
up the dirt the boys bring into a house often
constitutes the chief work of a housemaid. We do
not expect boys to mend their clothes, but they
should be made to put them away, and to keep
their books, papers, and toys in their proper places,
and to take care of their own pets.

We excuse young men from doing these things,
instead of smoking or novel-reading through the
whole of their spare time, on the plea that they
work at money-making, forgetting that they do
so for themselves, and not, like their father, for
the family benefit. We might reform these things
materially, and remove much of the self-indulgence
which causes what has been truly called " the
shame of mixed luxury and misery over our
native land." If we all habitually gave less
trouble, we should require fewer servants to wait
upon us.

There is a scarcity of good working servants

The Remedy. 33

while the governess market is largely over-stocked.
How many thousand of the poorest subjects of our
Queen are now sinking, sick with hope deferred,
into despondence, hating the present, dreading the
future.

And yet on all hands we hear our lady friends
say, " We must all wait upon ourselves now."
The impossibility of finding the average of three
servants for every house in London being now
recognized. Why need there be three servants to
every house, when servants are the greatest drain
to the fortune of a family, worse even than the
dress and society of its lady members, or than the
tobacco of the men ?

With study, and application of modern inventions,
the three servants might be reduced to two ; the
two-servant-power establishments might dispense
with one; and in many families where only one
servant is kept, a lady-help would be found more
useful, as well as more ornamental, than the
" dolly-mop."

Trade is bad, and many young women, such as
lace-makers, seek service. But being of the lower

D

^4 Hotisehold .Organization.

o

orders does not necessarily make them efficient
servants, not more so than young ladies who have
never learnt household work.

The existing puzzle is how to utilize the lady-
help, for we must always bear in mind that she is
a lady. She must not be merely ornamental, nor
may we expect her to do anything menial. And
here we must distinguish — this indeed is the great
point for distinction — what is menial and what is
not, and then see if we can reduce the number
of works considered menial.

When we read of Marie Antoinette's delightful
playing at work at the Trianon, and think of her
in her bewitching costume, her work, the work
she supposed herself to be doing, is placed in
the region of picturesque poetry ; as Tennyson's
gardener's daughter, training her wreaths over
the porch, is as poetical a personage as his pensive
Adeline or stately Eleonore.

We hear that the daughters of Queen Victoria
take pride in, and give personal attention to,
their dairies, and love to work among their
gardens and model farms. And the Prince Consort

The Remedy. 35

designed model cottages for the poor in which it
would be bliss to dwell, only it is impracticable to
make the poor endure novelties in domestic life.
Why, then, should we alone think it improper,
unlady-like, and what not, to study these every-
day utilities, and plan improvements in sinks and
boilers ?

But things are not so bad as they were thirty
and forty years ago, as regards what is lady-like
and what is not. We are emancipated from the
thraldom of its being considered genteel to be
idle, and interesting to be helpless, unable to dress
ourselves, or tie our own bonnet-strings without
the assistance of our maid. In my young days
we alwavs had to wait for a maid to come and
hook our dresses ; we should not endure this
now.

The favourite story of the Queen always putting
away her own bonnet, and folding up the strings (!)
helped much in sweeping away this fanciful
gentility. Since the introduction of the sewing-
machine, made as a piece of furniture fit for a
lady's sitting-room, ladies have been less ashamed

36 Household Organization.

to be seen making their own dresses ; and every
girl now, of any pretension to taste, twists up her
silk, tulle, and ribbons, mingling them in hats and
bonnets with flowers or feathers, the most graceful
objects in creation, until her skill produces a thing
of beauty which is a joy throughout the summer.

What artist would desire a more charming
subject for his picture than a pretty girl before
her glass, trying in which position these delicate
gauds best become the face they will adorn. It
is holding nature up to the mirror. Yet some
years ago girls were ashamed of a home-made
bonnet, because their careful elders taught them
it was more virtuous to make shirts than to
cultivate their taste. The consequence was they
were obliged to pay some guineas for a bonnet,
as amateur millinery was a tissue of horrors.

The cooking-schools are helping us in another
useful branch of housewifery. Here again woman's
work is being raised out of the dulness of the
" Berlin repository " into an atmosphere in which
all the senses may revel. Smell and taste are here
perfectly satisfied, and here we offer another picture

The Remedy

for our imaginary artist — or perhaps the beholder
may be a lover.

What more captivating sight than the girl of his
heart deftly moving about among bright pots and
kettles, and delicious bits of blue and other ware,
gleaming among the copper stewpans ? Dutch tiles
all round the stove, and everything as picturesque
as in a Friesland kitchen (which we admire enough
to go a long way to see), and the young housewife
in a fresh and prettily worked dress of Holland or
cambric, made short, showing her red morocco shoes,
her sleeves short to the elbow, with a dainty bib
and apron to keep her dress from soil : she rolling
out pastry at a marble table, having by her side a
graceful ewer of water, or fanciful milk-pot, and,
in neat arrangement, quaint jars for jams, and
pails and tubs of the carved wood which is so
artistically made by the Norwegian peasants. But
I must fill up my outlines further on, as I enter
into detail of each department of the house, and
show how the first steps may be made easy in the
direction of pleasant employment which shall be
both useful and economical.

3& Household Organization.

Do not look upon the taste and beauty of details
as unimportant. They make up the harmony of
our lives. Taste exercises a larger influence than
we give it credit for. What makes Paris flourish ?
Why do we all enjoy it ? Not for its Louvre
galleries, nor for" its intellectual life and culture
most, but for its tasty shops !

We will speak of the house in the following
order. First, the hall by which we enter it from
the street ; then we will bring our housewife into the
kitchen, not necessarily, nor even advisably, down-
stairs, but near the entrance-door, so that the
goods brought into the house need not have far
to travel and be lifted (which would entail fatigue)
before they reach the scene of their transmutation ;
the dining-room will come naturally next to the
kitchen, as it should be nearest in a topographical
sense.

Then we can adjourn to the withdrawing- room,
and refresh ourselves with jardiniere or conserva-
tory before undertaking the arrangement of the
bed-rooms and nurseries, where we pass so large a
portion of our lives ; and lastly, we will speak of

The Remedy. 39

the inhabitants, more particularly of the children.
In considering the latter, we shall find the greatest
benefit of anything I have recommended in this
book, namely, that in place of the low-minded
words and sentiments and vulgar habits of those
who come nearest to ourselves in the society of our
children, we may have a higher and purer associa-
tion, so that the good of their future education
will not have already been neutralized by corrupted
early principles.

By interesting occupation our young ladies will
have less time for sentimental troubles and fancied
ill-health, which is nervousness. Eugenie de Guerin
hit the mark when she wrote, " Yes ; work, work !
Keep busy the body, which does mischief to the
soul ! I have been so little occupied to-day, and
that is bad for one, and it gives a certain ennui
which I have in me time to ferment." On another
occasion she speaks of having been writing and
thinking, and then going back to her spinning-
wheel or a book, or taking a saucepan, or playing
with her dogs ; and then she adds, " Such a life
as this I call heaven upon earth."

40 Household .Organization.

THE ENTRANCE-HALL.

The evil of side doors — Difficulties with cooks — Who is to answer
the door ? — Four classes of applicants — Arrangements for trades-
people— Visitors — Furniture of the hall — Warming the passages
— Dirt and door-mats — The door-step — Charwomen.

MANY of the most respectable old houses in
London and other large cities have only one
street door and no area gate ; and this is a great
advantage, for of all inventions for the demoraliza-
tion of households, the side or servant's door is
the one which does its work- most surely. There
is no oversight of it ; and neither master nor
mistress can tell what is going on below-stairs, or
at the back of the house, when the shutters are
closed and the family are at dinner, or in the
drawing-room in the evening.

The side door had its origin in a pride, or false
shame, which could not bear to see a vestige of

The Entrance- Hall. 4 1

the working of the machinery of the house, and
in that tendency to separate the ornamental from
the necessary part of the household economy which
has worked so disastrously for us all, making us,
first, unwilling to take a practical share in the
management of our houses, so widening the
class division between mistress and servant ; and
secondly, has thrown us into such a state of de-
pendence upon our subordinates that the boldest
of us dare not venture into the kitchen except at
stated hours ; and then, having received the pro-
gramme of the proposed arrangements for the day
from the cook, we are expected to go away and
be no further hindrance to the eleven o'clock
luncheon, which is one of the five solid meals
daily required to sustain life in the hardships of
service. Most ladies know what it is to wince
under the sharp tongues of their cooks, who " don't
like to have missuses come messing about in their
kitchens," and their sarcasms upon " ladies who are
not ladies," etc., etc., until many weak-minded
victims retire before the enemy, and, giving up
the vain pretence of ordering the dinner and

42 Household- Organization.

examining the kitchen daily, send for the cook
after breakfast, and get the interview over as soon
as may be. It requires a very strong sense of duty
to make one go where one is so palpably unwel-
come, where one's most innocent looks are con-
strued into a mean peeping and prying, and the
least remonstrance is met by insolence.

I have, as a rule, been fortunate with my servants,
and of late years I have successfully employed
foreigners, who are generally more tractable than
English servants.

I carried my point, when living in a villa near
London, and locked the side door, retaining the
key. I found great advantage in so doing on
comparing notes with my neighbours, who told
me their servants had threatened to leave directly
there was a question of closing the side doors.

But this is only a recommendation where ser-
vants are kept. A responsible supervision of young
servants is quite consistent with allowing them due
liberty. This should always be granted them, as
a dull imprisonment is misery to the young, and
then they would not endeavour to take it in a

The Entrance- Hall. 43

clandestine manner, and surreptitious dealings with
dishonest characters outside would be avoided.

To our present argument it matters little whether
there be a side door or not, except that it affords
greater facility to burglars ; so we will treat of the
principal door as the only one, because this is most
frequently the case in town-houses where there
is no area gate, and the use of that does not enter
into our plan of proceeding at all.

One of the first difficulties that presents itself
to the lady wishing to maintain a small household
staff is the opening of the front door. The ques-
tion meets us on the threshold, who is to answer
the door ? Who will be the slave of the ring ?

A lady-help does not like to undertake this
office, and to the mistress it appears still more
unsuitable. But let us analyze the subject.

There are four classes of people who knock at
our door : the family, tradespeople, visitors, and
casuals. The first division of the difficulty may
be easily disposed of. The master and mistress,
for these titles must be strictly maintained, have
each a latch key ; the rest of the family may

44 Household Organization.

habitually use a particular knock agreed upon be-
tween them, and then the person who happens
to be nearest to the door will open it.

Schoolboys and girls return at stated hours, and
one is prepared for their appeal. For several years
past my family has used four single knocks, which
is a sign sufficiently unlike other knocks to be
recognized immediately.

The postman's knock is well known, and in
families where there is no great eagerness to get
the letters, they fall naturally into the letter-box,
which should be made deep, and the slit large
enough to admit the Times newspaper easily.

In Italy it is usual to write the word fnori on
a card, and stick it in the door when one is not at
home ; and in this case visiting-cards would also
be left in the letter-box. We might adopt this
method, or even the Temple fashion of saying when
we are likely to be home again.

The tradesmen are the most difficult to arrange
for, and here invention must be called into play.
Tradespeople first call for orders, and then with
supplies.

Tke Entrance-Hall. 45

Suppose we had our doors fitted with a kind
of turnstile door, something- like the birdcage
gates which used to be at the Zoological Gardens,
only with the outside made of wood, closely fitting,
so as to admit no draught. This, by a push, would
allow the goods to be deposited within the door,
on the table upon which the cage turns round.
The opening should be of a size to admit a leg of
mutton easily. The goods, once deposited, could
not be removed from the outside, as the door only
works one way.

Through this opening the lady-housekeeper
might give her own orders without their interpreta-
tion by an underling, and without being exposed to
the public gaze, as she would be if the front door
were fully opened, while the leg-of-mutton aperture
would be sufficient for both parties to see to whom
they were speaking. In the case of a single door,
instead of the very general folding doors, it would
be necessary to have the cage made to fold back,
and the table to let down with hinges, to allow
of the door being opened back against the wall ;
the table might be lowered after midday. This

46 Household Organization.

arrangement would also dispose of most of the
casuals — the beggars, pedlars, and others who
haunt our door-steps — to the entire prevention of
hall robberies.

And now we come to the last and most consider-
able division of the subject — our visitors ; comprising
relatives, friends, and strangers. If we lived in
Arcadia, or in the Colonies, we should most likely
be so glad to see our friends that we should joyfully
run to welcome them. Or if we were very great
people indeed, we should not mind doing as Queen
Victoria does, going to receive them at the moment
of their arrival. But as we are middling people,
and neither shepherdesses nor queens, we dread
being natural for fear of being thought poor.

For people are very much more afraid of being
thought poor than of being poor, seeing how often
they let themselves be dragged into poverty by
idleness and extravagance. The best remedy I
know for the fancied difficulty of opening our door
to our visitors, is to have no friends but those
whom we are glad to see, and to begin every new
acquaintance by putting it at once on a footing of

The Entrance- Hall. 47

actual fact, letting people understand that we try
to make the best of our means, and live within
them. Then, if they will not take us upon our
own terms, wre need not regret that they do not
wish for our friendship.

We shall find, in actual practice, that it makes
very little difference to their opinion of us, if when
we are at home we have the courage to tell them
so ourselves ; -or if a dirty maid-servant, after an
interval of waiting, receives their cards in the
corner of her apron because her hands are black,
and says she will go and see if " missis " is at
home, or even if a neat parlour-maid fulfils the
same office, and ushers visitors into a brown
holland-encased room, leaving them to remark the
time the lady of the house takes arranging her
dress and her smiles previous to appearing.

In whatsoever way the ceremonial may be per-
formed is of importance to none but ourselves.
The visitor forgets it immediately, only retaining a
general impression, cheery or dismal, as the case
may seem ; and if we are nice people and our
visitors nice people, according to our respective

48 Household Organization.

ideas on that subject, we shall cultivate each other's
acquaintance all the same.

It is immensely hard work to make five hundred
a year look like a thousand. The effort to do so
is seen through in an instant by a keen-sighted
observer, and then it is ten chances to one if you
get credit for what you really possess. It is never
worth while to pinch and pare our everyday life for
the sake of a few occasions of display.

Let us now go on to consider the best fittings
and furniture for the entrance-hall.

Encaustic tiles make very good flooring for a
hall, and are very easily cleansed with a mop or a
damp cloth wrapped round a broom. A good thick
door-mat is a great temptation to people to rub
their boots well. This is really better than one of
those delightful indoor scrapers all set round with
brushes, which are seldom used after the first few
weeks of their introduction. Mine is as good as
new, and as highly polished, and I have had it for
years. A couple of good door-mats are much more
useful.

It is necessary to have a stand with a large drip-

TJie Entrance-Hall. 49

dish in a corner of the hall, to hang up cloaks
and mackintoshes, and hat-pegs of course, but
particularly a good-sized cupboard for boots, shoes,
and goloshes, so that the family may change them
in the hall on entrance. A carved bahut, or Italian
linen coffer, is very useful in a hall for children to
keep their school and garden hats and bonnets in,
the lid serving for a bench ; but many halls, which
are often merely narrow passages, would be incon-
veniently crowded by one of these rather ponderous
pieces of furniture ; besides which, they are costly.

A deep bowl of Oriental china is as nice as
anything for a card-dish, and the hall is a more
appropriate place for it than the drawing-room.

Where it is thought necessary to warm the house,
hot-water pipes laid from the kitchen are as cheap
as anything. If the pipes are heated by a separate
gas-stove in the hall, they will supply hot water to
the bed-rooms also ; but it is not a healthy practice
to heat the passages of a house : it causes the cold
to be so much more felt on going out. Where the
influence of the stove is felt in the bed-rooms it
often prevents sleep.

50 Household Organization.

In many houses which are kept too close and
warm the families are subject to constant head-
ache, and in others to a perpetual succession of
colds ; according to their temperament requiring
more oxygen, or their susceptibility to the sudden
change from the heated to the outdoor air.

Unpolished oak is the most usual and the best
material for hall furniture ; it is cleaned by rubbing
with a little oil, which shows the grain and enriches
its colour.

One rule which in practice saves more dirt in the
house than any other, is that no member of the
family be allowed to go upstairs in walking-boots.
I have carried out this law for some years, after
having long been troubled by my schoolboys rush-
ing up and down stairs with their dirty boots on ;
and the saving to my stair carpet is very consider-
able. Boys and girls do not run up and down so
often, if compelled to exercise a little attention
beforehand.

But little boot blacking or brushing need be done
in the house. Gentlemen can easily have their
boots cleaned out of doors, and ladies, by the use

The Entrance- Hall.

of goloshes, may reduce this work for themselves to
a minimum, many kinds of boots being much
better cleaned when sponged over lightly than
when they are brushed or blacked. Every member
of the family may not unreasonably be expected
to take care of his or her own boots.

The door-step, or flight of steps, which is such
an affliction to householders and such a joy to
servants, may be kept sufficiently clean by being
washed by the charwoman who comes one morning
a week to do the scrubbing and scouring ; which
would be too menial — in other words, too public
and too laborious — for any lady-help to endure.

Hearthstoning the step seems a very useless
practice ; the grey stone itself is a nicer colour, and
only requires a mop or a broom to keep it free
from dirt, according to the weather. Much white
dust is brought into the house by the daily use of
hearthstone, and precious time is wasted in the
operation.

It may be well to understand, at the outset of our
description of the work of a house, what parts of it
cannot usefully or practicably be undertaken by

52 Household Organization.

women who have been gently nurtured, before dis-
cussing the portions which their knowledge and
skill are best calculated to perform. For although
we may by forethought reduce within a small com-
pass the toilsome part of the duties, there will
always remain some functions which it would use-
lessly tax a lady's valuable time and strength to
perform. For, after all, the office of the mistress is
to raise housekeeping to the level of the fine arts,
" where the head, the hand, and the heart work

together."

Incidental mention has already been made of the
charwoman ; she may be employed for the harder
work in the following manner : —

The charwoman should not have her meals in
the house, but she should be paid by the piece for
certain work done ; say, door-step, id. or 2d., accord-
ing to size and number of steps ; kitchen floor, A,d. ;
passages, according to size and requirements. Many
charwomen would gladly undertake work on this
plan, and many poor women or strong girls would
rejoice to do a morning's work and get home early
to their family with what would pay for their dinner

The Entrance- Hall. 5 3

It is impossible to lay down fixed prices for
piece-work, as this must necessarily vary with the
size of houses and the habits of the owners.

The charwoman can shake the heavy door-mats,
and sweep out the kitchen flue, if the species of
stove used require sweeping — and most of them do.
She may also break the large lumps of coal into
knobs of the size necessary for the patent ranges
needing fuel of a certain size, and she might place
the week's supply of coal in the fuel-box.

It would be better in many cases to employ for
this hard work a strong boy with a Saturday half-
holiday. He could do it all quite as well as a
woman, and much more easily ; but as we find we
shall be taxed for a man-servant if .we employ any
arms but a woman's, we must make the best use
we can of the worse means, consoling ourselves
with the idea that the woman will use the money
paid better than the boy might do.

5 4 Household . Organization.

BREAKFAST.

Lighting gas-fire — Difficulty of rousing servants — Family breakfast
— Cooking omelet — Hours of work and enjoyment — Duties
of mothers and householders — What is included in six hours'
daily work — Clearing away the breakfast — Bowl for washing
the vaisselles — Ornamented tea-cloths — Muslin cap worn while
dusting — Use of feather-brush — Cleaning windows — Advantages
of gas-fire.

The gas-fire is the key-note of my system of
domestic economy. The thing most impossible
for a lady to contemplate doing, unless compelled
thereto by duty, is to get up early, and before the
.shutters are open or the household stirring, to lay
and light a fire, or light one already laid. The
thought of going to a coal-cellar, shovel in hand,
to bring in a scuttle of coals on a winter's morning
is enough to make the bravest shudder. It is work

Breakfast. 5 5

only suited to those who have strength and hard
nurture.

But can the most delicate woman think it a
hardship to light the gas-stove, or tripod, in the
dining-room, whereon stands an enamel-lined kettle
ready filled overnight, or else a coffee-pot already
full, and only waiting for the match to be struck
to make it hot ?

This is less trouble than to rouse one's self at
seven o'clock to ring the bed-room bell, which often
fails to summon a sleepy maid : and few English
servants are early risers. Those who keep foreign
servants have greatly the advantage in this respect.

Very many of us require our servants to rise and
be downstairs before seven, as most gentlemen have
to be in the city, or at their offices or chambers, by
nine, and all schoolboys and girls at school. In
the great majority of families breakfast must be
ready punctually at eight.

While the family is assembling and prayers are
being read, the kettle is boiling, and the tripod is
soon ready for eggs to be boiled upon it, and bacon
or kidneys fried.

56 Household Organization.

My experience of another plan for a very com-
fortable every-day breakfast is, where a spirit lamp
(methylated spirit, not petroleum) stands on the
breakfast-table at the mistress's right hand, and
from a plate containing eggs, butter, and some
rashers of bacon, she cooks a savoury omelet, and
fries the rashers in a small china fryingpan over
the lamp, passing to each person the hot slices as
they are done, and serving the omelet fizzling from
the pan to all.

This process of cooking only takes five minutes,
and the food is ready to be eaten as soon as the
tea is made or the coffee poured out ; and it is a
pretty and cheerful occupation while letters are
being read and talked of, or the Saturday Review
cut.

A few savoury herbs, such as parsley or chives,
are a great addition to the omelet ; and it is easy
to chop overnight the teaspoonful that is sufficient
for the purpose, and put it on the plate with the
other preparations. A few slices of cold potato
are easily fried when the bacon is taken out of the
pan ; the bacon fat fries them deliciously. The

Breakfast. 5 7

china fryingpans may be bought at many shops,
particularly at No. 9, Oxford Street, London.

Toast is not easily managed ; but with hot rolls
from the baker's, marmalade, honey, and potted
meat or ham, on the table, a very substantial break-
fast may be had with little trouble, and no delay in
its preparation.

We will suppose the gentlemen of the family
have left the house for the business of the day, and
the boys gone to school, and we will now, before
continuing our description of the house and its
furniture, give an outline sketch of the proceedings
of the ladies during their absence.

For England expects every woman to do her
duty, as well as every man, and to prove herself a
help-meet for man before pretending to rivalry.
The division of our time given in the old lines
seems to be a very rational one —

" Six hours to work,
To soothing slumber seven,
Ten to the world allot,
And all to heaven."

This allows ample time for rest and enjoyment,

58 Household Organization.

and sets apart an hour for daily service in the
church for all who wish to attend it.

In Utopia, Sir Thomas More allots six hours a
day for work to all men and women, and no longer ;
as he holds it to be important that we should have
more time available for enjoying the living we
work for, than for working to sustain it.

We give ourselves so little enjoyment in our
play, that a great man once said, " Life would be
very tolerable if it were not for its pleasures." We
have come to treat our play as if it were our work —
and no wonder, since we have made it so very
troublesome — and having thrown our appointed
work upon the shoulders of other people, we now
complain how badly they do it.

We mothers have a certain work given us to do,
not by man, but by our Maker, whose servants
we are. This is to take care of our children.
Instead of doing this, we leave them almost en-
tirely in the hands of strangers, and during great
part of the day we know nothing of their doings,
nor of what they are learning or thinking.

What should we say to a nurse or a governess

Breakfast. 59

who neglected them as we do, and how shall we
answer for our lack of care ?

We householders have . laid upon us the care of
our houses. Yet it has come to be a recognized
thing that we are to touch nothing in them with
our own hands — at the utmost, we are to give our
orders ; and the wealthy among us do not even do
that, but are waited upon with every luxury, and
then sent ready-dressed into society.

We ar£ not our own, and we have little to do
with the making of our position in life. We must
accept the status quo and make the best of it ; so
we may as well acquiesce cheerfully in our circum-
stances, doing as much as we can, and see if regular
occupation will not make our hearts lighter, and
help to bring back the days of Merry England
again.

But we have no time for preaching now, and I
would not willingly give a sermon in any case.
I only threw out that suggestion of six hours'
work for fear you might think I meant you to be
busily employed all day, and then you would drop
the book in disgust. But go on a little longer, and

60 Household Organization.

you will find that I am less hard than the Ladies'
Art-Needlework Society, which insists upon eight
hours of close application, and far less hard than
the Cambridge Board of Examiners, which drives
you on night and day, leaving no time for house-
hold duties ; much less for dancing, or picking
flowers in country lanes.

No ; my six hours' work will include your music-
practising, and your attentive reading for purposes
of study. For unless yours be the only pair of
feminine hands in the family, you will not find
more than three hours occupied with household
work, and part of that time will comprise a daily
walk, a constitutional with an object, and the
remaining part will not be disagreeable ; at least,
I hope not, but it will be work and not play.

After this explanation let us return to our
subject. We will take it for granted that there are
at least two ladies at home. One, the lady-help or
eldest daughter, for example, will dust and set in
order the drawing-room, whilst the mistress of the
house proceeds to clear away the breakfast some-
what after the following manner.

Breakfast. 6 r

When the coffee-pot was taken from the gas
tripod to be placed on the breakfast-table, the
kettle was refilled from a -tap fixed on one side of
the dining-room fire-place, and the water will be
by this time hot enough to wash the cups and
plates in.

Immediately under the tap stands a large bowl
of Delft, or other ware sufficiently strong for daily
use, and yet ornamental or picturesque enough to
remain always in the dining-room. Terra-cotta is
a good material for this purpose, as the colour
is always decorative to a room. One might have
a bowl of very elegant design made at the Wat-
combe terra-cotta works. Better still, in the case
of its being required to be movable, would be
a wooden bowl of the Norwegian carved work
manufactured by peasant artists of Thelemarken,
under the direction of M. de Coninck, of Chris-
tiania. Some one of Minton's vases or jai'diiiicrcs
would answer the purpose very well ; but unless it
had a plug and a pipe for letting off the water, like
many washstands have, it would be heavy to lift
with water in it. But a bowl with these fittings,

6 2 Household Organization.

placed on a fixed stand near the fire-place, would
be well worth while taking some trouble to procure
for the dining-room. It would be quite as orna-
mental, and no more expensive, than the china
flower-pots on unsteady pedestals which are so
universally popular ; indeed, it might balance one
of these on the window-side of the fire-place, if it
were thought proper. A piece of oilcloth might be
spread under the pedestal, if it does not stand on
the varnished floor.

From the sideboard-drawer will be taken a
neatly folded tea-cloth, ornamented most probably
with open work at each end, or adorned with
colour in the style of the Russian household linen
in the collection of the Duchess of Edinburgh, and
the lady will proceed to rinse and wipe the break-
fast cups and saucers, together with the teaspoons,
milk-jug, and the cleaner plates, and will then lay
the plates that have grease upon them to soak in
the hot water, to which some additional hot water
has been added.

Before taking out the plates, the china which
has been used at breakfast should be neatly

Breakfast. 6

j

arranged on, or in, the sideboard. This saves the
trouble of carrying about trays of crockery, and the
consequent breakage. I will describe the china
cabinet as I go more particularly into the details of
the dining-room.

The remaining plates may now be wiped, and
the etceteras replaced, the cloth brushed, neatly
folded, and laid in a drawer with the table nap-
kins, and the fryingpan cleansed by relighting the
spirit-lamp for a minute while some hot water
bubbles in it to clean it ; the towel itself taken
away to dry, and the tea-leaves, and a small
basin of eggshells and scraps carried into the
kitchen ; the raw eggshells to be used to wash

decanters and glass, and the tea-leaves reserved

for dusting purposes.

The windows are opened and the gas fire turned

out, and this important ceremonial of the day is at

an end.

By this time the drawing-room will have been

dusted by the second lady, the week's duster being

kept in a convenient drawer. The feather-brush is

wielded as a wand by the graceful mistress of the

64 Household Organization.

instrument, whom I should recommend to wear
a muslin cap to keep the dust from falling on her
hair.

These caps, when made of Swiss muslin and
trimmed with a frill border edged with Valen-
ciennes lace, are most becoming. They are best
and prettiest when made in the shape of a large
hair-net. A pretty bride used to come down to
breakfast at Interlaken wearing this kind of cap,
and other ladies at once adopted the style for
wearing at their morning work or sketching.
This was some years ago, but a good shape is
always good.

To any one unused to the mysteries of dusting,
it is surprising to find how easily the ornaments of
a drawing-room may be kept in order, and how
well the gilt frames of pictures preserved, by a
light play of the feather-brush every morning.
The French use the plumeau in nearly all cases
where we rub with a hard duster, and with great
advantage, especially in the case of gilding.

A man or woman hired once a month will keep
the windows bright ; they are all the brighter if

Breakfast, 65

cleaned with newspaper dipped in cold water —
some mordant in the printer's ink has the property
of rendering them so — and. they are the more easily
wiped, having less fluff about them than if cloths
are used.

A light rub with a leather makes bright stove
bars more brilliant, and in summer the fire-place
will give very little trouble ; though for ladies
managing their own work, andirons and a wood fire
will be found easier to keep in order, as well as
being more picturesque.

A gas fire, built with pumice and asbestos, lasts
without needing a touch for three years, and
though less delightful than wood or coal, is
infinitely cleaner, and gives no trouble at all. A
gas apparatus with four jets can be laid in any
ordinary fire-place, and fitted with pumice and
asbestos complete for seven and twenty shillings,
perhaps for less ; but that is what I have paid.
And when one considers the saving of labour in
carrying upstairs heavy scuttles of coal, besides
the original cost of the scuttles, with the ludicrous
inappropriateness of the ornamental varieties, the

F

6 6 Household . Organization.

total abolition of fire-irons, including that absurdity
seen in many houses, the supplementary or deputy
poker, besides requiring no chimneysweep in the
drawing-room at all, it may be thought well worth
while to have a gas fire laid at first. The superior
cleanliness and security against smoke are great
arguments for its general use, besides the ease with
which it can be lighted, or turned out when not
wanted for use. Being in the fire-place, the gas
finds vent in the chimney, so there is no feeling of
closeness in the room. The disadvantage of a gas
fire, in some people's opinion, is that it may not be
poked or touched ; but this is soon forgotten. Its
appearance is like a clear fire of cinders, except
when the sun is shining, and then it burns with a
greenish tint not at all pretty.

Breakfast cleared away, and the drawing-room
neatly arranged, the beds have next to be made.
This is done with little exertion, as modern beds
have spring mattresses, and French wool mat-
tresses above these which require no shaking ; so
that bed-making gives only a little exercise with a
minimum of fatigue. Two people can make a bed

Breakfast. 67

with great ease, but as a rule I should advocate
every person making his or her own bed.

I must not here go into the detail of setting the
bed-rooms in order, as this will come more properly
into the description of the upper part of the house.
So I will only suggest that if one room be cleaned
each day, and the staircase on one day, the house-
work is not so heavy a task as it appears.

68 Household Organization.

THE KITCHEN.

Parisian markets — No refuse food brought into a house — Catering
in London — Cooking-stoves — Pretty kitchen — Underground
kitchens objectionable — Kitchen level with the street door —
Larder and store-room — The dresser — Kitchen in the Swiss
style — Herbs in the window — -Hygienic value of aromatic plants
— Polished sink — Earthenware scrap-dish — Nothing but ashes in
dust-bin — Soap -dish — Plate-rack — Kitchen cloths — Few cleaning
materials necessary — Hand work better than machine work —
Washing at home — Knife-cleaning — Fuel-box — No work in the
kitchen unfit for a lady to do.

Time works many changes ; but will it ever bring
into our English markets the various and neatly
arranged vegetables, the bouquets of salad, pleasant
to the eye as to the taste, the neat little joints and
divisions of meat, the temptingly prepared poultry
and game, and the many kinds of appetizing
comestibles, which are to be found in the markets

The Kitchen. 69

of Paris ? There a housekeeper may amuse herself
by varying her dinners for every day, having an
embarrassment of choice between countless deli-
cacies. There the fillet of beef (the undercut of
the sirloin) is already larded for the roast ; the
pigeons are boned and prepared for the compote ;
the veal is cut in shape and beaten for the cutlets ;
the pigs'-feet are boned, stuffed, and truffled ; slices
of galantine are ready to be laid on a dish for
luncheon; crayfish woo the mayonnaise; parsley
and butter are waiting to be poured over potatoes
a la maitrc-d' hotel. There the spinach may be
bought ready boiled and finely chopped, only
needing to be warmed with its poached eggs ; the
sorrel is already picked over and cooked ; the
carrots are cleanly grown, and evenly selected, and
sold with just the quantity of feathered green tops
useful for a garnish. In fact, all is so contrived
that the least possible refuse matter shall be
brought into any house, so saving the labour that
this entails.

Nor does this trimming and spoke-shaving add
to the price of the articles, as the surplus vegetable

yo Household Organization.

remains go into the ground at once, but little of
what is uneatable being taken to the market at all ;
thus saving the cost of carriage, and paying for the
little time expended in its removal ; while in the
case of meat, the purchaser finds it more profitable
to cook only such parts as are entirely eatable,
without letting time and fire be consumed in
preparing what is always wasted.

This is not a cookery-book, though when I think
of how much we have to learn before we can make
good use of our fine provisions, I feel tempted to
branch off on this line ; but the lady amateur will
learn more by giving careful attention at the
cooking-school than by reading many books.

In London we can buy peas ready shelled, fowls
ready trussed, fish prepared for the pot or pan, and
sometimes our beans ready slit ; but carrots must
be scraped, greens washed, and turnips peeled, and
apples also, though potatoes need not; tongues and
hams may be bought boiled, and cakes ready
baked. Still, with us much more food has to be
prepared at home than in France, though we have
this convenience — that the provisions are brought

The Kitchen. J i

by the tradesmen to our doors, which is seldom the
practice there.

For general cooking, the gas tripod like that
used at breakfast will not serve our turn, except
on cold-collation days in the heat of summer,
when cold lamb or salmon, salads and fruit, are
more grateful than anything else.

Many people dislike to have their cooking done
by gas, and it is objectionable for roasting or
broiling ; still, there are such numerous inventions
in cooking-stoves, each simpler, cleaner, and more
perfect than the rest, that only the embarrass-
ment of selection can cause hesitation in making
a choice.

Near a nice bright stove, placed in a recess glitter-
ing with Dutch tiles or Minton's artistic plaques,
surrounded by burnished pans and pots of well-
lined copper or brass and neat enamelled sauce-
pans, the genius of the hearth presides over the
mysteries of Hestia.

The window, made with diamond panes mingled
with a few lozenges of bright colour, is mostly open
in summer, and wreathed with climbing plants — as

*]2 Household Organization.

vines, and ornamental gourds, with their curious
black or scarlet fruit, the rich foliage intercepting
the sunshine — or closed if it be winter, and draped
in pleasant muslin. I would take great pains to
make my kitchen the most picturesque and cheer-
ful room in the house, as it is one of the most
important.

On no account would I use the great black
beetle-trap cellar downstairs and underground,
which strikes with dismay the greater number
of young girls who have rushed from school into
marriage, and who instantly become the prey
of the tyrant imprisoned in that dungeon, which
is too often also a den of iniquity.

No ; if obliged to have a house with one of these
dismal caverns, I would invent some useful pur-
pose for it ; but I would not willingly select such
a dwelling. These underground kitchens must
eventually die out, and our children will wonder
why we used such airless, lightless places.

In a house arranged on my plan we aim up-
wards, not downwards. We might, perhaps, on
wet days, let the children go to these basement

The Kitchen. J 3

rooms to skip or romp, as there they could not
shake down the ceiling beneath them, as some-
times happens in upstairs play-rooms ; only the
rooms must be kept carefully whitewashed, and,
as far as possible, well aired.

Or the old kitchen might be fitted up with racks
for guns and fishing-rods, and used as a smoking-
room, when cosily papered, and carpeted with
matting; and the back kitchen converted into a
carpenter's shop with lathe and tool-chest.

But our kitchen, the pride of our house, will be
level with the dining-room and front door. It
is a foolish practice to have all vegetables, meat,
coal, etc., taken downstairs for the purpose of
bringing then all up again.

When it is impossible to spare two rooms on the
ground floor for household use, let both kitchen
and dining-room be upstairs, while the drawing-
room might be on the ground floor. This would
give no more work than does our present custom.
But where it is possible, it is better, for obvious
reasons, that the kitchen should be on a level with

«

the street door.

74 Household Organization,

When the room used as kitchen is large and has
two windows, one side of it may be partitioned
off for a larder, or store closet ; or if there is a small
third room near, it may be used for these purposes.
But much depends upon the aspect of the room
and its means of ventilation. A town larder need
not be large, as the butcher, fishmonger, etc., can
keep the provisions far better than we can do in
the best of larders. A pantry and scullery will be
quite unnecessary in a house arranged in this way.
Wine will be kept in the usual wine-cellar, but
beer, in bottles or in a small cask, may be kept in
the cupboard under the stairs which is so universal
in town houses.

The kitchen floor should not be carpeted ; but
one or two undyed sheepskins make comfortable
mats, and are easily cleaned.

The kitchen dresser may be made of the usual
shape, though the cornice seems superfluous, as it
is too high for anything but dust to rest upon it.

Where it is thought better to do so, the old
kitchen dresser may be brought bodily upstairs. If
it ?s varnished and its back painted red, and the

TJic Kitchen. 75

edges of its shelves very dark brown, with bright
brass hooks in them, it may have bright brass
handles put on its drawers, and it will do very
well ; and white or blue-and-white ware will look
extremely well upon it.

A kitchen may be very prettily fitted up in
the Swiss style, with unpainted deal employed
decoratively whenever there is a fit occasion for it.
The back of the dresser may be made of narrow
boards, each lath cut out uniformly in a pattern
at the top, forming a band of ornament. The
shelves will look very nice with a border of fret-
work, in sycamore, placed either above or below
their edges. They are more easily cleaned if the
ornamental border is fastened on like barge-board-
ing, but this plan is not so well adapted for hooks.

Mottoes in old English character, which is simi-
lar to the German Gothic type used in Switzerland,
form an appropriate decoration to the cornice of
the room.

The tables and chairs must be of unpainted
wood, plain, but of good form. All hooks and bars,
or whatever cannot conveniently be made of wood,

J 6 Household Organization.

should be of wrought iron. This gives a good
opportunity for having window-bars and fastenings,
or even a balcony, made in ornamental iron work.
The window-curtains will be of Swiss muslin.

Oval wooden pails, with a board on one side left
tall and cut out for a handle, made in various sizes
for water, milk, etc., are as useful as they are suit-
able to the style adopted ; and baskets may be
made like those carried by the Swiss mountaineers
at their backs. A cuckoo clock and a few hooks
of chamois horn carry out the effect. Characteristic
ornaments, such as paintings of Swiss scenery,
and flowers in wooden frames, wood carvings on
brackets, wooden bears as matchboxes, wooden
screw nutcrackers, should be collected during visits
to Switzerland ; and a Swiss costume will be found
as practically useful as any dress the young cook
can wear, and will add a great charm and liveliness
to the scene.

But be the style adopted what it may, and it
is well to exercise individual tastes, it need not be
made expensive, or not more so than an ugly
kitchen. Thought and care should combine to

The Kitchen. jj

make it cheerful and attractive, in order that the
real work to be done in it may not have a de-
pressing influence : that the lady, or her assistant,
may not pine for the greater excitement of the
Row or the rink. The kitchen window should be
well furnished with scented plants ; and in case
of having no garden, pots of parsley, mint, and
thyme may be grown successfully on a balcony.
Every house might possess its sweet basil plant,
and every Isabella might rear it in as elegant
a pot as that in Holman Hunt's picture. Plentiful
use should be made of it in cookery; it is one of
the best of herbs. Indeed, we too much neglect
all these aromatic plants, the hygienic value of
their fragrance alone being very great. Some girls
might save the small fortune they now spend in
opopanax and patchouly, by cultivating lavender
and thyme for their wardrobes ; while balm and
bergamot are sweet enough to make the kitchen
smell like Araby the Blest.

China ginger-jars will be found good for pre-
serving dried herbs for winter use.

The sink is a very important part of the kitchen

yS Household Organization.

furniture. This, in our model kitchen, should be
a shallow bath of Marezzo marble, which is a
strong, durable composition, finely coloured. We
should select it of a colour harmonizing with the
general style of the kitchen. The sink must rest
upon two columns, or short shafts, of the Marezzo
marble, hollowed down the centre, to allow of the
water running freely away at both ends of the sink,
each tube being stopped by a bell-trap. It must
stand on one side of the kitchen fire-place, so that
a pipe and tap may readily communicate with the
self-supplying boiler. There must also be the
usual pipe to conduct cold water from the cistern.

The best possible sink would be of real marble,
highly polished ; but the cost of this would
preclude its use in our economical household.
Enamelled slate would be cheaper and very good,
and it would retain its polish better than the
Marezzo marble, or japanned metal might answer
the purpose pretty well. But doubtless a demand
for such articles would cause Messrs. Minton's
factory to produce a sink in strong glazed earthen-
ware which should be finely coloured as well

The Kitchen. 79

as elegant in form, making-, indeed, an object as
beautiful as a Roman porphyry bath. Many of
the public washing fountains in Italy, or the south
of France, would serve as models for this purpose.
One of the most important points to be attended
to is that it should be highly polished, as grease
would be more easily removed from it, and it
would be cleaner.

Beneath the sink is the pot for scraps and refuse,
of which a small quantity is inevitable, unless there
is a garden, or poultry are kept; in which cases
all rubbish may be turned to account, the only
exception being fish-bones and scraps, which, under
all circumstances, must be burned.

The refuse dish should be of earthenware to
match the sink, or of terra-cotta, glazed inside.
It must be made in two compartments, one for
usable scraps and one for waste. Each division
should have a cover with a small air-hole in it,
both covers made sufficiently heavy not to be
upset or opened by the cat ; and there must
be a handle to lift it out once a week, or oftener,
when its contents are disposed of, either as gift,

So Household Organization*

or to some person calling for it regularly. In all
economical families the dripping is consumed
either for frying, or else clarified for cakes, etc.
Cinders, of course, are to be sifted in the covered
cinder-sieve, and the ashes only allowed in the
dust-bin. By care on this point, seven-tenths of
all fevers might be prevented.

By the side of the sink should stand a neat
towel-horse for drying the damp cloths ; and a
pretty dish made in two divisions, with a strainer
for soap and soda, should be hung in a convenient
place. This dish would be best made in earthen-
ware, but it might be of carved wood in a kitchen
fitted up in the Swiss style.

A plate-rack must be above the sink, and here
is great scope for tasteful decoration without
interfering with its lightness or strength. A rack
like those in general use would, however, be per-
fectly inoffensive, and so would our ordinary
buckets and dish-tubs ; but souvenirs of travel,
such as the quaint wooden pails seen at Antwerp,
or the brass fryingpan-shaped candlesticks at
Ghent, should be eagerly sought, as they add

The Kitchen. 8 1

much to the picturesqueness and piquant liveli-
ness which are so desirable.

A round towel, on a roller with nicely carved
brackets, is indispensable. This should be of finer
holland than it is generally made of, being for
ladies' use ; or it might preferably be of soft
Turkish towelling, with coloured stripes and a
fringed end, and so be pleasanter to the eye and
touch than the ordinary jack-towel.

The dresser-drawers must have their piles of
kitchen cloths neatly folded, and separated for
their different services. These should be the pride
of the young housewife's heart, all of them having
their ends tastefully ornamented, either ravelled
out or knotted into fringe for the commonest,
or open worked, or edged with Greek lace and
guipure-d'art, according to their quality ; the
dusters only being plain, and these of two sorts,
one stout for furniture, and the other kind of
soft muslin for ornaments. Housemaid's gloves,
wash-leather, and any favourite cleaning materials,
should be kept in a drawer by themselves ; but in
my experience I have found very few of these

G

82 Household Organization.

things necessary. As is the case with all the arts,
the more complete the paraphernalia, the less is
the work done. It takes so long to set in order
one's apparatus, and to play with it a little, that
as soon as something is begun to be done, it is
time to put all away again. How often we see
this with amateur painters ; they set out too heavily
equipped.

The black-lead and brush, and broken saucer full
of something pulpy, the powder that is always
falling out of its packet or bit of newspaper, and
the other odds and ends which crowd our house-
maids' dirty buckets, and the scrubbing brushes
and hearthstone which encumber our sinks, are
only barbarisms trying to conceal the slovenliness
they pretend to correct. A house regularly and
neatly attended to needs few or none of these
things, while sandpaper, rotten-stone, and whiting
may be almost entirely dispensed with. The
homely old proverb should be remembered, Avhen
tempted by advertisements of these things, " Elbow-
grease is the best furniture polish."

Mincing-machines, apple-paring-machines, and

The Kitchen. S$

toys of this kind, arc all very well when ladies use
them themselves ; but they represent so much
idleness, waste, and destruction in the hands of
careless cooks, who like to sit over their letter
writing, or their weekly paper, while the kitchen-
maid does the work. And when a fragile machine
breaks or gets out of order under her heavy hand,
she only " drats the nasty thing " and throws away
the broken part, pushing the rest aside to become
a portion of the dreadful accumulation of lumber to
be seen in every house.

My own practice as a wood-carver teaches me
to prefer using that perfect tool, the hand, in its
ever adaptable way, to using it servilely to grind
out sausages. By the time one has prepared the
meat to feed the machine, set it in working order,
and taken it to pieces again to clean it, one might as
soon have used a sharp knife, and the meat would
have tasted better than it does when its juice is
squeezed out and its fibre torn to rags, so that the
insipid rissoles made from it need half a bottle of
Harvey's sauce to make them eatable. It may be
a matter of taste, but the difference seems to me as

84 Household Organization.

great as between music played on a piano and
noise ground out of a barrel-organ.

Washing-machines, I have found to my cost, are
a failure also, at least in hired hands. I bought
one of the best, but as I had also a washing-tray,
the machine, warranted to do everything, was neg-
lected, and its lid employed as a table ; as we too
often see with our pianos, telling thereby a tale of
forgetfulness. The mangling part of the machine,
which was sometimes used by semi-compulsion,
always had its screw left turned on at full pressure,
so that the spring would have been powerless in a
week, had I not loosened it myself. Washing at
home had better not be attempted in the case of
ladies doing their own work. We want to lighten
the labour of the house ; since, if we endeavour to
do too much, we shall either become household
drudges, or else decline the work altogether.

But supposing a family has time and opportunity
to do the laundry work at home, a tablespoonful
of liquid ammonia and a dessertspoonful of
turpentine used in the washing water, where a
quarter of a pound of soap has been finely sliced,

The Kitchen. 85

will be found to remove dirt from the clothes
without rubbing, saving labour, much soap, and
the wear and tear of the things.

In the case of large families, besides the greater
economy of washing at home, which is, however,
doubtful when extra labour is hired, the immunity
from infectious diseases being brought home in the
linen is a powerful motive for undertaking the
work, and doubly so where there is a garden, as it
is so much better for our health to wear linen dried
in the fresh air, rather than in the small courts of
the neighbourhood where our laundresses usually
dwell, or in the close passages of their houses.

Kent's patent knife-cleaner is as much used, and
as useful, as any of these domestic machines,
though I prefer the leather-covered board. Pyro-
silver knives seem to save labour, as they are
cleaned like any spoon ; wiped first, as all greasy
knives should be, with paper, then washed in warm
water and wiped with a cloth. My own pyro-silver
knives keep very well and remain bright, but as
they have valuable handles of elaborate Burmese
ivory-carving they are carefully used. I have

86 Household Organization.

heard people say that the pyro-silver does not
wear well, being easily scratched and otherwise
injured.

Balancing the sink on one side of the stove is
the fuel-box, containing a quarter of ton of coal.
This, in most of the new stoves, will last several
weeks, and it may be bought in this small quantity
at a time, or replenished from the usual coal-cellar.
This consideration would be determined by the
season, by whether the other stoves in the house
burn gas or coal, and by the number of rooms
requiring daily fires.

The fuel-box should have a lid, forming a table
for any temporary uses, or any of the less cleanly
sorts of work — I will not say dirtier work, because
in this system there should be no dirty work,
nothing but what a lady may do without loss of
dignity, and without injury to hands which in the
afternoon will handle delicate needlework, and
in the evening recreate themselves over the
piano.

And this leads us to speak of the systematic
employment of lady-helps, in such cases as they

The Kitchen. 8 7

may be a real comfort and assistance in a family,
and not where they are expected to be perfect
servants, who for small wages will relieve idle
ladies from the difficulty of first obtaining and
then enduring a few ignorant domestics,

88 Household Organization.

THE LADY-HELP.

True position of a lady-help — Division of work in a family — The
mother the best teacher — Marketing — Young lady-helps —
Luncheon — Early dinners for children — Recreation — Preparing
the late dinner — Evening tea — The lady-help a gentlewoman —
Her assistance at breakfast — Her spare time — Tact.

I USE this title, not because I think it is the best,
but because it is already in general use ; though,
as yet, very few people have any clear idea of
what the true position of a lady-help should be.
Some persons suppose they must treat her as a
visitor, in which case she would be worse than
useless, and such a situation could not possibly
be permanent. Others think she must be em-
ployed precisely like an upper servant, and only
look upon her as a means of escape from the
penalties of their own position.

In houses where there are grown-up daughters

The Lady-Help. 89

it is noi necessary, nor even advisable, to employ-
any labour outside of the family beyond that of
the charwoman, as previously described.

The work may be so divided as to press too
heavily on none, always bearing in mind, however,
that, as " Life is real, life is earnest," there is real
work to be done in every household, the aim
being to lighten it by contrivance, and by utilizing
modern inventions ; in fact, making of science and
social economy two valuable servants, instead of
exalting them to be our masters, as we have all
been doing lately, For, notwithstanding all our
brilliant inventions, wre have so multiplied our
wants that life is neither easier nor cheaper than
it was in the days when we knitted our own
stockings, spun our own flax, and used strong
handloom sheetings, and woollen cloths which
were not made of shoddy.

Let us take as a typical family a mother and
three daughters, two of them grown up and one
still a child — a by no means uncommon instance.
The men and boys may be many or few, it makes
little difference to our example.

90 Household Organization.

Probably the mother is not so strong as the
grown-up daughters. She might make choice of
the needlework department, or the teaching, sup-
posing her own education to have been good ; in
which case she would add the benefit of her ex-
perience to every lesson given, rendering it far
more valuable than instruction from a young
teacher ; as in all branches of study she would
distinguish what is good and lasting from what
is merely ephemeral, and we should have fewer
flimsy pieces of music learnt to the exclusion of
great masters, and fewer meretricious drawings on
tinted paper, as we grow out of our admiration
for these things at an early period, and home
education would have a more solid groundwork.
Young teachers are too apt to think they know
everything, and only aim at their own standard
of education, finished as they believe it to be.

Perhaps the mother might prefer to reserve a
general oversight, with only such lighter work as
the breakfast-table as already described. The
daughters could share the remaining work in the
following manner.

The Lady- Help. 91

While the breakfast is being cleared away, one
daughter, accompanied by her youngest sister, will
arrange the bed-rooms, and dust the drawing-room
and such parts of the dining-room as have not
been included in the work of setting in order after
breakfast. The little girl would rejoice in helping
in this way — all children do ; and when they have
no real work of this kind, they imitate it with dolls'
houses. Housekeeping is one of a girl's natural
instincts ; it is only quenched by accomplishments
being put in its stead.

While the manager of the needlework sees what
requires her attention in that department, and
plans it for unoccupied hours — keeping, perhaps,
some fancy portion of it for pleasant work in the
evening, while music or reading is going on —
the daughter who is housekeeper for the week
attends to the culinary arrangements, and con-
siders what marketing will be required. She will,
either alone or accompanied by one of her sisters,
proceed to give her orders at the various shops,
or go to the market and make her own selection.
She will bring home some of the purchases herself

92 Household Organization.

— any parcel, for instance, that is no heavier than
a little dog — but mostly the things will be sent to
the house.

Co-operative stores may or may not be an
advantage to their customers — it is a disputed
point ; but two good things they have done for
us : first, making us pay ready money for what
we buy ; secondly, doing away with the ridiculous
fear we formerly had of being seen carrying a
parcel.

This expedition will have given our young
heroine the necessary morning air and exercise,
and it need not be so long as to prevent her
enjoyment of a more ornamental walk in the
afternoon — visits, or a cruise in the rink.

In the case of there being only one grown-up
daughter, a young lady-help may be thought an
agreeable addition to the family. She would be
a pleasant companion to the daughter, and they
might share the work in the same manner as two
sisters would do. If she were more accomplished,
or better read, than the daughter of the house,
this would be a source of improvement to the

The Lady-Help. 9

->

latter ; or if the superiority were on the other side,
the benefit resulting- to the companion would be
such as to make her endeavour, by increased use-
fulness, to show her sense of the advantages whereby
she would be enabled to add to her acquirements.

Much ease in daily life is obtained by dining
early ; but as this is seldom possible where fathers
and husbands are out all day at their employments,
the necessarily late dinner involves a sacrifice of
our time and pleasure, which we must try to render
as small a hardship as may be, and take as a duty
what is such in reality.

Luncheon for ladies is easily provided where
there are no ravenous schoolboys and girls to cater
for, because, as they will dine late, the luncheon
need not be a hot spread meal. A tray with slices
of cold meat, bread, butter, cheese, or perhaps
some cold potatoes fried, or any easily warmed little
dish remaining from yesterday's dinner, will make
an ample luncheon, with a glass of beer or some
claret. But if there are schoolboys and girls who
come home to an early dinner, it is indispensable
that it should be a real dinner, and no make-

94 Household Organization.

believe. The experience of schools and large
families shows us that the cheapest and most
wholesome fare for children is a joint of meat, with
potatoes and another vegetable, a daily pudding,
varied according to circumstances, bread, and beer.
No adjuncts ; neither pickles nor condiments,
cheese nor dessert. All these etceteras are super-
fluous and unwholesome, and entail extra plates
and additional trouble to everybody.

The joints of meat, with potatoes and York-
shire pudding, are as well cooked at the baker's
as at home, and with much saving of heavy
work.

The following is a good working-plan for a large
family : a joint of meat roasted the first day, the
next day cold, which is better for the children
than having the joint cut in two and both parts
eaten hot — cold meat is very good for them. The
remainder may be stewed, or otherwise warmed
up on the third day ; and so forth, varied with
boiled meat occasionally and fish once a week — on
Friday in preference, as there is a better choice of
it on that day, it being purveyed for the Roman

The Lady -Help. 95

Catholics and others who eat it on principle.
Monday is the worst day for fish.

The daily pudding should be simple, without
sauce, and with very little spice. Spices become
valuable medicines when not habitually taken with
the food.

It is a mistake to feed children entirely on meat
and potatoes ; this diet does not afford sufficient
variety. Fruit and milk puddings are very whole-
some and nourishing^ for children, and so is simple
pastry, when made without baking powder, the
frequent use of which is very lowering, as is the
case with all alkalies.

Luncheon over, the hours ■ from two till half-
past four are free for everybody. Now is the
time for music-practice, wralks, visits, and general
recreation.

Visitors drop in about this time, and may be
encouraged to stay by the sight of the afternoon
tea-table standing ready arranged in a corner
of the drawing-room. The descent for five minutes
of one of the ladies will be sufficient time to
make the tea and produce a plate of biscuits, or

96 Household Organization.

the cake-basket. The gas may be lighted under
the kettle at the time the door is opened to
visitors.

At half-past four the fire must be made up in
the kitchen, and all things put in readiness to
prepare the late dinner. This, in the interest of
the health of all, and especially of those who
return home tired and hungry, should not be
later than six o'clock, where it is possible.

The dinner and dessert occupy little more than
an hour, and half an hour is sufficient to clear all
away, and set the things ready for the next morn-
ing's breakfast. The cloth may be left spread on
the table, only brushed and neatly laid.

We have then a pleasant social evening left us ;
two hours and a half before ten o'clock, which may
or may not be broken by an evening cup of tea,
according to taste.

Luxurious people, whose days hang heavily on
their hands, are the fortune of the doctors.
Among them we may include servants in large
houses, who are, perhaps, more self-indulgent than
any. And it is the habitual five meals a day

The Lady-Help.

required to fill up time in an opulent house, that
contribute most to fill the pockets of the phy-
sician.

It is pleasant, certainly, for an occasional change,
to stay in a house where at nine o'clock the butler
and two footmen stalk in with the tea-tray and its
appurtenances ; but the main, though unacknow-
ledged, cause of the ceremonial is, that it may be
seen that the men-servants are at home in the
evening, and not at the public-house.

As a daily habit, however, the continual break-
ing up of time caused by the ever-recurring meals
is very tiresome to those whose occupations are so
unnecessarily hindered.

It has been shown that the daily housework for
a small familv is not too arduous to be under-
taken by the members of that family, in any case
where the grown-up ladies in the house are two or
more. But in the circumstance of a young wife
and mother, it were better that she should not
attempt to cope with the greater part of the house-
hold work, especially if she be alone in the house
all day, or with young children only. The sense

H

98 Household Organization.

of solitude is too depressing, and all unshared
labour is much heavier.

In case of her having no sister, or female friend
or relation, to whom she might be glad to offer a
home, she should seek a cheerful lady-help, who
would be pleased to feel she is putting her time
to profit. And if strong, healthy, and a skilful
manager, the lady-help will find how far more
interesting this varied work may be made, than
the drudgery of sitting in a dreary school-room
as governess to a tribe of tiresome children, where
her only recreation is the monotonous daily walk ;
or the more independent, but far more laborious,
occupation of a fine-art needleworker, to whom
eight hours' continuous daily toil are obligatory.

As far as I can see and judge by letters written
to the Queen and other papers, and the jokes in
Punch, the difficulty, almost impossibility, of get-
ting gentlewomen as helps is the drawback to their
being put forward as a solution of the domestic
difficulty. The engagement of half-educated or
pretentious daughters of small tradespeople is by
no means desirable, either for themselves or for us.

The Lady-Help. 99

We do not wish them to be our companions, yet
they must be treated with a greater degree of
familiarity than ordinary servants ; and if they
are allowed to be on a nominal footing of equality,
it can only tend to lower the tone of the whole
household. But the lady-help, in an establishment
suited to the feelings of such an one, may easily
be a gentlewoman by birth and education, and
not a lady in name merely.

As regards the invasion of domestic privacy,
which has ever been found such a disadvantage
where a companion, or a governess, is always the
sharer of our meals and conversation, it is by no
means necessary, hardly even possible, that this
should be the case with a lady-help ; except at
breakfast, when it is surely no hardship, but the
contrary — indeed, it must be a pleasure — to have
at our children's most important meal the assistance
of a lady whose care of their wants prevents our
own breakfast being uncomfortably hurried.

For breakfast is unlike dinner-time in this, that
as husband and wives have already had plenty of
time for all they wish to say to each other, the

ioo Household Organization.

presence of a third person is not inconvenient,
while at their reunion about dinner-time, when
each has the day's adventures to relate and com-
ment upon, a stranger is sometimes in the way.

Indeed, it is one of the greatest difficulties in
the lady-help system, that of necessity she cannot
sit at table while serving the dinner.

The greater number of ladies will be as well
pleased to have their spare time for their own
pursuits, as to be obliged to sit in the drawing-
room all the evening, trying to seem amused
with doing nothing. A lady offering herself for
work of this kind will generally be of an energetic
temperament, and able to employ her leisure profit-
ably in reading, drawing, or needlework, or perhaps
she may have her ov/n piano in her room.

It would frequently conduce to the comfort of
all parties if she had an invitation, which she
might accept or refuse, to join the drawing-room
circle; and this should be given on occasions
when it is likely to be agreeable to her, at such
times as her necessary duties will cause no awk-
wardness to herself, the mistress, or the guests.

The Lady- Help. 101

Exercise of tact will be frequently called for, no
doubt, in this avowedly the weak part of the
scheme ; but with wit, invention, and a hearty
endeavour to make a subordinate position as little
painful as possible, many difficulties will be tided
over, and when once the novelty of the method
is worn off, many little complications, by being
less thought of, will be less felt.

Where a governess is kept as well as a lady-
help, the two ladies could enjoy life together quite
independently of the general company ; and it
might be found perfectly compatible with their
avocations to give them permission to invite their
personal friends to spend their evenings occasion-
ally with them.

In the case of the daughters of the house taking
its duties upon themselves (and no one can consider
it an ungraceful service to wait upon a father), the
way would be smoothed by common endeavour of
all the members of the family, and much kindly
courtesy would be aroused, and earnest effort to
give the least possible trouble ; all of which should
be done in the case of the lady-help.

102 Household Organization.

When we go more deeply into the detail of the
dinner, which is the piece de resistance of the day's
programme, we will endeavour to show how, by
careful fitting and steady guidance, the wheels of
the domestic machine may run smoothly and noise-
lessly in their grooves, especially if the oil of good
humour be plentifully supplied. And several sug-
gestions will be offered, which, however, must be
looked on merely as suggestions, and not as essen-
tial parts of the system ; for in every household
there will be modifications, according to the in-
finite variety of tempers, tastes, and habits of the
family.

( io3 )

THE DINING-ROOM.

Carpets and curtains — Picture hanging and frames — Distemper
colouring for cornices — Oval dining-table — Sideboard for break-
fast service — Beauty of English porcelain — A London dining-
room — Giulio Romano's banquet — Growing plants — The large
sideboard — Dinner-service — Styles of dinner — Food in due
season — Gracefulness of flowers and fruits — Fresh fruit better
than preserves — Communication between kitchen and dining-
room — Remarks on plate — Table decorations.

Having given a sketch of the kitchen, I must now
fill up that of the dining-room, which we left after
the breakfast was cleared away.

As the gas-tripod, the spirit-lamp, and the large
bowl for washing the china and other crockery-
have been already described, we may proceed to
consider what more immediately relates to the
dinner-table ; since the rest of the furniture need
not materially differ from what is at present in use.

In selecting a carpet for the dining-room, let us

ro4 Household Organization.

remember that a Brussels" carpet is more easily
brushed and kept clean, than are Turkey or Indian
carpets.

If it be made with a border, and the floor stained
and varnished all round at a width of from one to
two feet from the wainscot, beside being cheaper
to begin with than a fitted carpet, it is more artistic
in appearance, and more readily taken up periodi-
cally to be beaten ; while a long brush easily dusts
the varnished margin, and a damp cloth tied over
a harder broom will wash it in case of necessity.
Bordered square carpets are the more durable, as
they are able to be turned round as one part
becomes unduly worn.

The best kind of curtains for a dining-room are
of some rich-looking woollen stuff, thick enough
not to require lining. Rep is very serviceable, but
there are many more curious foreign fabrics which
may sometimes be met with at no very great cost.

Curtains ought to run easily on a pole, either
of wood or metal. If of metal, it should not be
very large, as the size of a hollow rod does not add
to its strength. Curtain rings can be sewn on at

The Dining- Room. 105

home, and so can any cord that may be thought
desirable at the edge, though this does not often
improve curtains from an artistic point of view.
There is no need of the upholsterer's intervention,
which mostly doubles the price of the curtains.

The height from the floor to the top of the
window should be measured, and the requisite
number of yards of material bought, allowing a
margin for curves in the folds of the drapery. The
rods should be sufficiently long to allow the
curtains to hang entirely upon the wall, not over-
hanging the window in the least. This preserves
the drapery, and keeps it from fading, while it does
not exclude the light.

The curtains should be ample enough to cover
the window completely when the shutters are shut,
without leaving a streak of opening. They should
likewise extend to the ends of the pole, so as
comfortably to keep out the draught.

If muslin curtains are used, they may conveniently
be tacked inside the woollen ones about half-way ;
this will keep the latter from some dust. A few
additional rings can be slipped on the pole, to

106 Household Organization.

which the remaining central parts of the muslin
will be gathered.

Curtains should touch the floor, or nearly so,
but they need never be allowed to lie in heaps on
the ground, as was formerly the fashion ; and the
voluminous folds sustained by brackets have been
advantageously exchanged for a simple band to
hold back the curtain.

Our mothers and grandmothers were certainly
victims to their upholstery ; we have improved in
this respect. It does not take many minutes to
unhook our curtains, shake them free from dust,
and hang them up again ; we have no com-
plicated pulleys to get out of order perpetually,
nor ponderous cornices with heavy valances, and
wonderful gimp and fringe. Those were fine times
for the upholsterers !

Do not hang your dining-room pictures very
high ; few of us tower above six feet, and it is
easier for those who do so to stoop, than for the
rest of us to stand on tip-toe ; we must consider the
convenience of the majority.

Money is well expended on picture-frames, as

The Dining- Room. 107

when they are handsome and chosen with taste,
they enhance our enjoyment of the pictures. But
a costly frame is not always a good one, and when
gilt composition runs riot in ferns and fantastic
flames, as we frequently see it do around mirrors,
its effect is barbaric, rather than elegant.

Broad flats in gilt plaster are less excellent than
gold laid on the wood itself.

For prints, where economy has to be much con-
sidered, few frames are better than those of flat
oak with a bevelled edge, and on the flat a slight
design of graceful lines made with the parting-tool,
and only the lines gilt.

Pictures, if small and numerous, should not be
dotted about the walls, but grouped. One some-
times see walls as spotted as a currant-dumpling.
A band of wood, called a grazing line, behind the
chair-backs protects the wall, and is an aid to
picture hanging, by giving a line from which we
may measure their bases.

If there are many large pictures, they should be
hung from a rod placed near the ceiling, or a foot
lower, if an ornamental band of paper is carried

1 68 Household Organization,

round the top of the room below the cornice. If
the cornice is not already " picked out," as the
decorators term it, in colour — that is, delicately
tinted in distemper — it should be done, as it is a
great improvement.

It is not difficult to do this for one's self. The
necessary materials are a pennyworth of whitening,
a pennyworth of size, and of the required tints
a pennyworth. Break up some whitening into
saucers, mix it with water until it is of the con-
sistence of thick cream, add a tablespoonful of
melted size to each saucer, shake in about a
teaspoonful of powdered colour to each, and apply
with a badger or hog-hair paintbrush.

Strong colours become pale tints when mixed
with the whitening, and the mixture dries paler
than it is applied. To paint the ground on which
the plaster design is embossed gives a cameo effect
and is elegant, but sometimes it is better to colour
the raised ornaments. Taste must be the guide
here. This quantity of material is sufficient to tint
every cornice in the house. Splashes of the colour
are easily wiped off while the mixture is wet.

The Dining-Room. 109

Where the family is small, an oval table, like we
generally see in France, is the most convenient
form ; as the master and mistress sit facing each
other at the narrowest part of the oval, where they
can communicate freely with each other, and more
easily dispense the general hospitality. A table of
this shape is lengthened by leaves inserted in the
central division ; when quite closed it is a round
table.

A dumb-waiter placed at the right hand of the
mistress enables much personal waiting to be
dispensed with.

If the dining-room be large, it is desirable to
have two sideboards, one larger than the other.
The breakfast things should adorn (for that is
what they really ought to do) the smaller side-
board.

With all the beauty and comparative cheapness
of our Worcester and other pottery, we ought, in
every family, to possess such a collection of
beautiful objects for daily use as should for ever
prevent our sighing after the palmy days of Greek
art. I was at Sevres not long ago, and while going

no Household Organization.

over the porcelain factory there, I mentioned

that I had been over that at Worcester. "Ah, then,
madame," said the official, " we can show you no
more ; you have indeed seen all."

And had we no careless and ever-changing
servants to shatter our elegant treasures, we might
have in daily use objects which would enrich a
museum, and train our eyes to a higher perception
of beauty ; and we should learn to value our
porcelain, not for its rarity, but for its intrinsic
merit.

Look at our picturesque coffee and tea pots, our
elegant cups, and well-painted bowls. Why should
they always be concealed in china closets, or con-
signed to kitchen-dressers, while our dining-room
walls are too often bare and cheerless ? — a few
dismal prints, hung too high to be seen or easily
dusted, being frequently the only adornments of a
darkened room, like a waiting-room at a railway
station for emptiness of anything to occupy the
mind, yet which ought to be one of the pleasantest
and brightest in the house. Instead of which
cheerful appearance, here is a sketch of a regulation

The Dining- Room. 1 1 1

dining-room in one of London's broadest brown
streets : a room always dark in winter, but in
summer exposed to glaring sun and a plague of
flies.

As soon as a window is opened to cool the
stifling air, a simoom of dust rushes in from the
road, and from the dust carts heavily moving to
the slow music of the " Trovatore's ' Miserere,
adding a bass to the noise of cabs whirling by
to the waltz tunes of " Daughter Angot " and
" La belle Helene."

Tables, chairs, and sideboard are remarkable
for nothing but representing so many tons of
mahogany embellished with the grinning heads of
griffins. Curtains powerfully scented with dust, a
large chimney-glass made over to the flies, a heavy
bronze machine with ponderous weights and
pulleys, all smelling very strongly of gas, chiefly
useful for casting deep shadows upon the dining-
table. The bean-green carpet, monotonizing with
the pea-green walls, whereon hang divers prints of
subjects undiscoverable, because they are skied
as high as the ceiling will allow, and two " old

1 1 2 Household Organization.

masters," as two oil paintings are called ; one a
bitumen-brown Wouvermans, or somebody else,
with the hind leg of a gray horse in the foreground,
and in the sky a patch of cloud caught in a tree.
The other " gem " had been bought at a sale under
the impression that its subject was " Angels
adoring the Infant Saviour," but which on closer
investigation turned out to be two wicked old
drunkards playing at cards, purporting to be by a
Dutch master.

Could even Giulio Romano's artistic festival
have been enjoyed in such a room as this, which is
only a fair specimen of the modern British banquet
hall ? Hear a short extract from Benvenuto
Cellini's description of it. After speaking of the
rich dress of all the guests and the beauty of the
ladies, he continues : " When they had taken their
seats, every man produced a sonnet on some
subject or other " — for they were a company of poets
and artists — " and Michelagnolo read them aloud
in a manner which infinitely increased the effect of
their excellence. The company fell into discourse,
and many fine things were said, and dinner was

The Diniiig-Rooiu. i 1 3

served up. Behind our backs there were rows of
flower-pots, filled with beautiful jessamines, which
seemed to heighten the charms of the young ladies
beyond expression. Thus we all, with great cheer-
fulness, began to regale ourselves at that elegant
dinner. After our repast was over we were enter-
tained with a concert of music, both vocal and
instrumental, and an improvisatcre recited some
admirable verses in praise of the ladies."

We could only on very rare occasions have rows
of pots of jasmine placed behind our chairs, but
we might easily grow an elder plant to keep off
the flies. The Swiss scarlet-berried elder {Sam-
bucus rufus) is graceful in growth, and will endure
some hard usage.

Flower-pots may also be allowed to remain on
the table, unless the plants are cherished pets, and
then they will be placed where they can receive the
sun and air.

Plants growing outside the windows, especially
climbers wreathing the window-frames, give an
appearance of size to rooms by bringing air into
the perspective. The picturesque effect of the

i

1 14 Household Organization.

forms of foliage relieved against the paler sky
is very pleasing, and it breaks the stiff straight
lines of the window better than any drapery.

The glory of the dining-room is its large side-
board. This, where there is a second sideboard,
may be either in the same style or in complete
contrast to it. Here the larger pieces of earthen-
ware and porcelain should be displayed to advan-
tage. These are such things as salad bowls and
outside pie-dishes, which may always remain in the
dining-room, and the whole of the dessert-service,
with the ornaments and table decorations.

The glasses and decanters should always be
elegant, and although in my opinion the Venetian
glass is by far the most beautiful kind, still our
own crystal and engraved glass is often exquisitely
lovely, and the sunshine playing through the pris-
matic decanter knobs, and other cut glass orna-
ments, gives an unrivalled lustre to the summer
dinner-table. Breakages under careful, delicate
handling would be less frequent than they are
now, so that the expense of procuring glass and
porcelain the best of their kind would not be felt
to be the extravagance it is now.

The Dining-Room. 1 1

It will be said that for all this display of glass
and china an enormous sideboard will be required,
at as enormous a cost. And the first objection I
concede, without, however, admitting it to be a
fault.

Why should not the sideboard be, if necessary,
as large as the side of the room ? But the cost
may be less than that of an ordinary dinner-
waggon. It might be constructed as a series of
shelves, ranged as high as can be conveniently
reached, broken by cellarettes and other cupboards
or cabinets, hung with worked curtains, the shelves
merely backed by paper made like embossed
leather. There is an infinite variety of styles and
forms in which the sideboard may be made ; from
the gorgeous mass of carved oak and velvet, set
with golden shields, and cups, and services of gold
plate, such as I have admired on the dining-room
walls of a palace built on the ruins of an abbey,
down to the stained deal dresser-shaped sideboard
of a house of fifty pounds a year, where it would
only be decked with graceful, yet unpretending,
china and terra-cotta, where its curtains would be

1 1 6 Household Organization.

of brown holland worked in crewels, and its intrinsic
ornaments the burnished brass locks, hinges, and
handles. Yet as fine taste might be visible in one
as in the other.

The table-cloth, table-napkins, and spoons and
forks should be laid in drawers, as such seems
their befitting place ; and salt-cellars, and other
diminutive articles containing condiments, may be
put away behind small curtains, or veils, of decora-
tive needlework, to shelter them from the dust,
as well as to give an opportunity for the display
of rich and elegant furniture embroidery, adapted
in style to the carvings, plaques, inlaid work, or
other adornments of the sideboard.

The piles of plates — as many of them must
almost of necessity be in piles — will be also con-
cealed and protected by curtains, or behind doors
turning on pivots, which, where they are available,
are far better than hinges.

The quantity of plates wanted for the daily use
of the family must be kept in the kitchen, as they
will be washed there, and need to be warmed in
readiness for dinner ; but dinner and dessert plates

The Dining-Room. 1 1 7

that are not used for greasy comestibles will be
rinsed in the dining-room, and rearranged at once.

I know some old Bristol china butter boats of
such simple but elegant form, that the curves
of the nautilus shell are hardly more graceful.
Yet these things had been banished to a kitchen
dresser until I implored their release ; and now,
in the present Bristol china mania, they are pro-
moted to a drawing-room table, a place quite as
unsuitable as was the kitchen dresser.

Among useful decorations for the sideboard, some
of the prettiest I have seen are the Venetian
curved bottles for holding oil and vinegar. They
are fixed in a glass stand, and as the curved necks
of the flask-shaped bottles bend over across each
other, by taking up the stand either oil or vinegar
may be poured out without spilling the other con-
diment, and the flasks require no stoppers, as their
curve is sufficient to keep out the dust, though
occasionally a glass dolphin is stuck in the mouth
of each bottle. This simple yet ingenious con-
trivance is far prettier than our somewhat vulgar
cruet-stand. Moorish brass salvers add colour and

1 1 8 Hotisehold Organization.

brightness to the sideboard, in families where silver
salvers and presentation plate are not matters of
course.

A simple style of dinner is more elegant, as well
as more healthful, than one more elaborate. Let
it vary with each day rather than with every
course : the dinner will thus preserve a character
of its own, better than where this is frittered away
among so many dishes that you cannot remember
off what you have dined.

There is a medium between this fidgety meim
and the monster joints we sometimes burden our-
selves with. It requires judgment to take the right
line. We need not attempt, in our everyday dinner,
to realize Disraeli's ideal of dining: "eating ortolans
to the sound of soft music." But we may try to
make our dinner an enjoyment as well as a refresh-
ment ; and although our set banquets may be rare,
taste and attention will impart to every meal some-
thing of the character of a feast.

Stress must be laid on the importance of having
every article of food in its due season.

Independently of the hygienic value of the

The Dining- Room. 119

change of diet so supplied, which is in itself a
substitute for many tonic and alterative medicines,
attention to this point will give us luxuries when
we may reasonably afford them.

Salmon is as nice when it is a shilling a pound
as when it is four times that price, and venison is
by no means an expensive viand if the market be
watched. If we only think of ribs of beef and legs
of mutton, we shall only get beef and mutton.
But if we take Nature for our guide, we need not
deny ourselves the most gratifying and healthful
variety. It is essential that we should eat the
fresh fruits as they are ripe, and this rule is equally
necessary as regards vegetables.

Indeed, in summer we should accustom ourselves
to think more of the vegetable food than of meat ;
to arrange our dinner in this department primarily,
considering what dainty dishes we may concoct of
flour and vegetables fried, boiled, and baked,
dressed with oil or milk, herbs or spices, inci-
dentally adding the meat — in fact, reversing our
usual order of proceedings, where we construct our
dinner plan of solid meat, only throwing in vege-

t 20 Household Organization.

tables or fruit by way of garnish. But what I
wish to dwell on now is not so much the quantity
of vegetable produce we ought to consume, as
the necessity of its seasonableness. .

When our cooks, be they noble, gentle, or
simple, have come to study the medicinal pro-
perties of plants — how they act upon the different
organs of the body, and so on — they will see how
beautifully they are adapted by the great Provider
to our bodily requirements, according to the weather
and other circumstances, and how often what
grows best in any situation or soil is the aliment
best suited to our own growth in that situation.

If we attended more to this point, our digestions
would have sufficiently varied exercise to keep
them in healthy working order, and we should hear
less about what does or does not agree with people.
It is of more consequence that our digestions
should be permitted to work at regular hours, than
that they should have an over-easy diet. This,
indeed, is absolutely injurious to them.

Persons sometimes feel ill, and whatever they
may happen to have fed upon is loaded with the

The Dining- Room . 121

responsibility, and that article of diet is cut off for
ever from their list, and its hygienic benefit lost
to the constitution. The blame is never laid on
irregularity, want of air, exercise, or occupation,
excitement or perhaps temper, or upon circum-
stances generally. Either the weather or the food,
irrespective of the quantity taken, is charged with
every ill.

If we took care to make pictures of our dishes
of fruit, they would afford us two delightful sen-
sations instead of one. To do this it is not needful
to have heaps of fruits, or pyramids of pines. A
plum on a leaf, an orange on a china tile, with a
branch of flowers laid across it, make exquisite
pictures.

See how we appreciate the form and grace of a
single flower in a specimen glass, so that we cannot
now endure to see the mass of crushed flowers we
used to call a nosegay ; the very word, so descripr
tive of the bundle, being done away with the thing
itself. The old nosegay gave us the scent and gay
colours of the flowers, but their tender grace had
fled. Now they are delightful to their very stems.

122 Household Organization.

Provident housekeepers have so impressed upon
our minds the necessity of caring for the future,
that we have been taught to make jam of our most
delicious fruits, denying ourselves their fresh beauty
and fragrance at our tables, while we roast our-
selves over preserving pans in the hottest days
of July. This, besides being martyrdom, is a
work of supererogation, as the fruit is nicer fresh,
and to buy it for the sake of keeping it is absurd,
as it can but be eaten once. It is a very reason-
able practice in the case of persons possessing
large fruit-gardens, as much might otherwise be
spoiled ; but in our town households it is trouble
taken in vain.

We all know the difference it makes to our
dinners whether they are served up hot, or only
lukewarm ; and this alone gives a sufficient reason
why we should insist upon the kitchen being close
to the dining-room. Where there is no possibility
of making a door of immediate communication,
we should try our utmost to get a slide-window
between the two rooms, so that the dishes, and
indeed the whole paraphernalia that necessarily

The Dining- Room. 123

moves from kitchen to dining-room, may be placed
on a slab at the said window on one side, and
taken in at the other side.

If two persons are engaged in performing this
work, one dishing up and placing on the window
slab, and the other putting the things on the
dining-table, it will be very expeditious, but it
may be quite easily managed by one person.
The slide-window, either a sash or a sliding-door,
saves much running to and fro.

I will conclude my remarks upon dining-room
furniture with a few words about plate.

The bulk of the plate in daily use in the houses
of the upper middle-class is electro-silver, and it
is very admissible, being strong, durable, and
agreeable to use ; and when made in the ordinary
fiddle or threaded patterns is useful without being
pretentious. But when it expands into Albert
patterns, king's patterns, and the like — when, in
short, it claims intrinsic value, and pretends to be
silver — it becomes vulgar immediately, because it
represents a snobbish feeling which is bent on
making a show with a sham. We cannot all afford

124 Household Organization.

silver plate, though doubtless we should all like it,
but all of us wish to have the most agreeable
medium with which to eat our food, and for this
purpose electro is as good as silver.

It is better, in purchasing, to buy the best quality,
as it is so much more durable, and it always looks
better.

For dessert knives and forks, those with mother-
of-pearl handles are the best ; the colour is so
pleasant, and they are very easily cleaned.

Should you happen to be the fortunate possessor
of old plate, let nothing induce you to do as many
weak persons are talked into doing : exchange it
for modern patterns.

Modern plate is seldom of even moderately good
design. The object of the manufacturer seems to
be to crowd upon it as lumpy an embossed
ornament as possible, to make it massive, and
remind us of so much per ounce. This was not
the motive of the old silversmiths, who more
frequently engraved than embossed their orna-
ments. Most of the old engraved silver is delight-
ful, and it is very light.

The Dining- Room. 125

The Oueen-Anne plate, now so keenly sought,
is of admirable workmanship and good design,
though the edges are rather thin and sharp for
comfort in use.

It is worth while having nice electro dish-covers,
as the ugly tin ones sometimes seem to have such
a very miserable appearance. It will not be
necessary to possess many, and they will come
to no harm in our elegant kitchen. They may be
either hung up or stood on the dresser ; the former
way is preferable, and rings to suspend them by
are easily attached. Dish covers should be warmed
before they are put on, as a cold metal cavern chills
a leg of mutton almost to the marrow.

Real silver ornaments for the dinner-table are
very precious, but failing these, we may make our
tables very elegant with Parian, glass, or even
wicker ornaments ; and the most interesting of any
adornments are vases and dishes painted on por-
celain by members of the family. I am sorry to
see so many small vulgarities introduced in the
shops in the way of menu holders, and other so-
called ornaments.

126 Household 07'ganization.

Grotesque is all very well, but it should show a
light, delicate play of fancy ; and things comic are
very amusing when they are not vulgar. But the
degenerate caricatures we see about now, mark a
tendency to flatter the lowest order of taste, which,
if followed, will inevitably drag our conversation
down with it. These silly table-decorations began
with caricatures of the men who carry the sandwich
placards up and down the streets, and daily I
see them acquiring all the bad style of common
burlesques, or of the cheap valentines.

I27 )

THE DRAWING-ROOM.

Social pressure — Agreeable evening parties — Troubles of party-
giving — Musical parties — Flowers on a balcony — Window-
gardening — Crowded drawing-rooms — The library or study —
Gas, candles, and candlesticks —Original outlay on furniture —
Different styles of furniture — Raffaelesque decorations — Carpets,
curtains, and chair coverings — Portieres — Window blinds — Rugs
— Care required in buying furniture — Ornaments — Dusting —
Chiffoniers useless — Portfolio stand — Mirrors.

This section of our subject involves our relations
with society ; and here not even our vanity can
make us believe that modern customs are really
improvements.

What chance has any lady of our time of emula-
ting the graceful manner in which Madame
Recamier held her salon, although she may have
as much learning as Madame de Stael ?

We are too heavily weighted, our social inter-

128 Household Organization.

course is too complicated, too much clogged with
ceremony, to move easily ; and where our highest
faculties should be allowed full play, we find so
much hard work and consequent fatigue, that we
look upon every dinner and evening party in the
light of an uphill road with a difficult team to
drive.

We all know and applaud the French manner of
visiting. Receiving friends on a stated day of the
week, simply enjoying their society, and exerting
the intellectual faculties instead of merely opening
the purse for their entertainment.

Why have we so seldom the courage to follow
this example ?

It is because we fear to show less well to the
eyes of our acquaintance if our own habits seem
less expensive than theirs. A low purse-pride is
at the bottom of it all. Our dress must be costly
and perpetually changing, our servants and estab-
lishment must be displayed, if we are ourselves
smothered beneath their weight.

So we give up our precious daylight to morning
calls, as we ridiculously call those visits of ceremony

The D reliving- Room. 129

which are paid in the afternoon. These afford
us no pleasure, while they are an infliction to the
people called upon. Do not most of us know the
feeling of relief that we have after paying a round
of visits, when, on finding, as the day was fine, the
greater number of our friends from home, we return
with an empty card-case, and say, with the com-
placency of self-satisfied persons who have done
their duty, " There, that is done and need not be
done again for a month." Whereas we are sorry
when even our slight acquaintances "regret they
cannot accept " our invitations to an evening party,
when we might enjoy their company, and they the
society of each other, at the same time, and at a
reasonable hour for enjoyment.

Our " at homes " are on a radically wrong prin-
ciple. We crowd our rooms, we insist on late
hours and fullest dress, and our pleasure in con-
sequence becomes a toil.

But how agreeable is the easy evening gathering
in a cheerful and early lighted drawing-room, where
few or many welcome guests drop in, knowing it
to be our " at home " day. Where we talk and sip

K

130 Household Organization.

tea, play and sing, or amuse ourselves, if clever,
with paper games — capital promoters of laughter
and whetstones to the wits — and go away as early
as we please. All to be over by half-past ten, at
any rate, in order not to interfere with early rising
next morning. I have found nothing, not even
guinea lessons from eminent masters, more con-
ducive to family improvement in music than this
way of enjoying society, since one is obliged to
have a few new things always at one's fingers'
ends ready to perform ; and in homely little parties
like these, young girls " not yet out " may pass
many pleasant evenings under their mother's wing,
with real advantage to themselves.

The simpler the dress worn by the ladies who
are "at home," the better the taste shown. Here
again we may learn much from the French, who
perfectly understand the art of demi-toilette.

Our theatres and concert-rooms are filled night
after night by people who pay to be entertained.
They never take food in their pockets, and the
passing to and fro of sellers of refreshment is felt
to be a nuisance. Why should people who have

The Drawing- Room. 1 3 r

dined late be supposed to want supper, unless they
have been dancing, or are sitting up later than is
good for them ? And the proof that they do not
want it is in the very little they take of it, except
some stout elderly ladies who prepared for it before
they came, and who consequently have felt too low
all the evening to be moderately cheerful.

People who dine early always make a solid tea
about six o'clock. It is only the bourgeois class
who love their hot suppers, and the taste stamps
them.

How can we use hospitality one towards another

without grudging, when, instead of being able to
rejoice that a friend is sharing our daily pursuits
and repasts, we must spend a fortune in jellies,
pastry, and unwholesome sweets, whenever we
invite our friends inside our doors ; when we are
compelled to import from the confectioner piles
of plates, dishes, and hired cutlery, turn our
houses into scenes of confusion for a week, and
feed our children upon what have been aptly called
" brass knockers," the remains of the feast ? No
wonder most of us dread giving a party ! No ; I

132 Household Organization.

would have special banquets on special occasions
— Christmas, comings of age, marriages, silver,
and above all golden, weddings, welcomes from
abroad, and other joyful days. But our enjoy-
ment of society need not be limited to such obser-
vances as these, but rather the crop of friendship
increased by attentive cultivation.

" Has friendship increased ? ': asks wise Sir
Arthur Helps. " Anxious as I am to show the
uniformity of human life, I should say that this,
one of the greatest soothers of human misery, has
decreased."

Lady Morgan, an experienced leader of society,
used to tell me, " My dear, give them plenty of
wax-candles and people will enjoy themselves ; '
to which I add, manage the music well, and teach
your daughters to help you, and cultivate musical
young men, keeping, however, the law in your own
hands.

Almost the only art we have not spoiled by
machinery is music — for we do not consider the
barrel-organ in the light of music.

Perhaps it is because in this art we had scope

The Drawing-Room. 133

for invention, not finding a good thing ready made
to our hands by the Greeks, which we might imitate
mechanically, and become slaves of its tradition.
Possibly it is a blessing in disguise that the music
of the ancients is lost to us, for having no models
we have no fetters.

There is, however, in music, less liberty for the
performer than for the master-inventor ; and this is
as it should be : we interpret his greater mind.
Wilful music is seldom pleasing.

What Ruskin says about truth of line in drawing
applies equally to music ; In the rapid passages
of a presto by Beethoven, the audience at St.
James's Hall would know if Halle played one
single note out, even if he slightly touched the
corner of a wrong black key; for our ears have
been wonderfully trained. And the time must be
as accurate as the tone, and the proper degree of
light and shade must be expressed, or you are no
master. What must it be to be the creator of the
music which it is so difficult even to copy !

Yet in our drawing-rooms we permit people to
talk all the time music is being played, showing

134 Household Organization.

respect neither to the composition nor to the per-
former. This should not be, and abroad this ill-
bred custom has not obtained.

There is, however, something to be said on the
other side. The music we hear in society is fre-
quently either flimsy and not worth studying ; or
it is too difficult for the capacity of the performer,
perhaps having been learnt in too idle a manner,
in which case conversation shields the composer.

But the chief cause of the distressing rudeness
complained of, is that there is too much music at
a party, and it is not well arranged. Glees are
got up and fail deplorably ; harps and flutes are
not in tune with other instruments ; people accom-
pany songs they have never seen before ; and much
time and talk are consumed in wishing for absent
tenor or bass voices. A little good music would
have been delightful ; the noise of so many imper-
fect efforts is only a bore.

In our parties we carelessly lose Nature's purest
delights : those which appeal most strongly to our
finest perceptions. Is it not true enjoyment to sit
among the roses on a balcony listening to a sweet

The D raic ui o- Room. i \

Ig-UIUUH*. Ijj

voice within singing an air of Schubert or Mozart ?
And if the charm be enhanced by moonlight, it
is a pleasure for the gods !

It is true that roses will not flourish on London
balconies, the coal-smoke being so injurious to
them ; but pinks, and many other fragrant flowers,
grow well and easily, without the cost of frequent
renewal required for roses. The general use of
window gardens, and the due encouragement of
greenery over our houses, would tend much to
improve our vitiated atmosphere, and we may
have the gratification of feeling that we are doing
good to our neighbours while we cultivate plants
for our own benefit. Perhaps, by-and-by, a tax
may be charged upon every empty window-sill.

The front and back of every house would make
a good-sized bit of garden, only it will be per-
pendicular instead of horizontal. We ought all
to grow our own pears trained against the walls,
as these ripen as well in town as in the country;
and most of us might dwell under our own vines
and fig-trees.

A balcony, however small it may be, is an extra

136 Household Organization.

room, and frequently it is a good play-room for
children if kept clean and well syringed. No
training is better for children than the culture
of flowers — it unites work and play with every
advantage of both. It is an education in itself.
Mr. Gladstone calls the love of flowers a peculiarly
English taste. He seems to have forgotten the
special fondness for plants shown by the French
and Belgians ; though the Dutch tulip mania
reminds one somewhat of a commercial specula-
tion. His remarks on the children's flower-show
held at Grosvenor House merit particular attention.
He observes that owing to the increased value of
land, large masses of the population are removed
from contact with nature, and at this period it is
important that every family should learn that they
possess a resource in the cultivation of flowers both
in their cottages and windows, and at every point
where contact with the open air may be obtained.
He hopes that with the needful improvements in
the dwellings of the poor, some means may be
devised for fostering cottage horticulture and
cottage floriculture.

The Drawing-Room. 137

Wind and scorching sunshine arc the great
adversaries to window gardening, but both of
these evils may be obviated by simple con-
trivances in • the way of screens.

Very few plants can be cultivated in our sitting-
rooms with advantage either to themselves or to
our furniture. They are greatly injured by gas,
as well as by the dry heat of our fires, while they
cause a dampness in the atmosphere which speedily
produces mildew and other ill effects of moisture.

We should bear in mind, in furnishing a drawing-
room, that the guests are the principal part of the
furniture, and leave sufficient space for the number
we wish our room to hold. A drawing-room as
empty as one of Orchardson's pictures may be
overcrowded by twenty people.

The walls may be adorned to profusion with
objects of taste, without their inconveniently occu-
pying space ; but tiny tables and flower-pot stands
are often in jeopardy.

In a room crowded with furniture the guests
cannot circulate — one because there is not space
enough to pass between a lady's' dress and the

138 Household Organization.

OLJ / / I / / £.> ( ''y f I I / 1st ts I Si *>'

small table with a vase upon it that is so likely
to be upset ; another because an ottoman just
before her keeps her a prisoner on the sofa where
she was planted on entering the .room — until
ladies are thankful to do a little something in-
audible at the piano as a pretext for moving, and
gentlemen are only too glad to be required to force
a passage in the service of a lady. And this not
merely in the absurd and terrible crush at an
" at home " in the London season, but at a simple
evening party anywhere.

It is often agreeable to have several afternoon
tea-tables in the drawing-room, as the ladies can
pair off at each, and become pleasantly acquainted
while serving each other. But in the case of large
musical " at homes," it is better to have refresh-
ments served in the dining-room, as the clatter
of spoons and the bustle of waiting disturbs the
music ; besides injury being often done by ice
plates left about, tea spilt, and crumbs trodden
into the carpet.

We will now leave the subject of parties and
study the drawing-room in its ordinary appearance

The Drawing- Room. 139

* — —

as the sitting-room of the family out of working
hours. A drawing-room should be used, and look
as if it were used, and if used properly it need
never be dirty nor in disorder. A library, or study,
greatly aids the drawing-room by preventing its
too indiscriminate use. Indeed, where boys and
girls have school-work to prepare, this is almost
a matter of necessity, as there is neither rest nor
comfort for their elders while lessons are going on ;
and if other members of the family occupy them-
selves much in writing or painting, it is a great
hindrance to have to remove their paraphernalia
every time the table is required for some other
purpose.

The room may be called a study, morning-room,
or library, according to its purpose, bearing in
mind that although the name is more high sound-
ing, a library with few books is only ridiculous.
And when there are many and good books, the
room must be held in great respect, and those who
use it trained to extreme neatness and order. I
find it a good plan to instal my eldest son as
responsible librarian at a small salary ; he sees

140 Household Organization.

that the younger children put away their books
after them.

A gas-standard lights a study better than any-
thing else for general use, though " the Queen's
reading lamp " is good for weak eyes.

The standard must be firm on its base, so as not
easily to upset ; it is less in the way if it stands on
the floor rather than on the table, and it should be
capable of being raised to the height of six feet,
or lowered to any point. It ought to be easily
movable in any direction, and the tube long
enough to admit of its being placed in any part of
the room. The only kind of tubing that really
prevents a disagreeable smell escaping from the
gas is the snake tubing. I had at first a kind that
was dearer than the ordinary india-rubber tubing,
but, although assured by the gasfitter that it
would be inodorous, I was obliged to change it for
the snake, for which I paid twelve shillings, and
have had no trouble since.

We all know that wax candles are the nicest and
most becoming light for a drawing-room ; but they
are dear, and candlesticks, however elegant, require

The Drawing-Room. 141

frequent cleaning. The commoner kind of candles
are greasy, and grease is very troublesome when it
drops about, though wax and sperm are readily
removed by warming the spots. There is a kind of
candle called the dropless candle which answers
very well to its name.

Paraffin, and almost all patent candles, fill the air
with burnt smoke, and this, to many people, is
insufferable.

Sperm candles are preferable to any others for
general use at the piano and for bed-rooms. And
candles need not be an expensive item when a
house is well fitted with gas, as much music
practising may be done by daylight and gaslight ;
while in bed-rooms we ought not to require much
length of candlelight.

There is no need of more than one candle to be
carried about, and that is for the person who turns
off the gas to go upstairs with.

An Italian lucerna is a picturesque object for
this purpose ; oil is burnt in it — colza will do,
though they burn olive oil in Italy, and it gives
double the light of colza. On no account use

142 Household Organization.

petroleum, or any of the mineral oils. Besides
their horrible smell and associations, all the kinds
are more or less explosive, and for the little use for
which we should require lamps, the difference in
cost is trifling.

One occasionally sees curious and quaint old
iron or bronze candlesticks, and it is well to seize
the opportunity of purchasing such treasures ; but
if not fortunate enough to get a better thing, it is
easy to procure one of those funny little brass
candlesticks, in the shape of a frying-pan, so
commonly used in the Belgian hotels.

As there are no servants in our model establish-
ment, tallow candles need never be bought, and
no candlebox will be required, nor any kitchen
candlesticks, to be stuck periodically in a row in
the fender to melt their grease and solder, and lose
their extinguishers and snuffers.

So we see, even in this small instance, how a
young couple beginning to furnish will want few of
these superfluities, and, not being compelled to buy
common things for servants, may afford things of
choice quality for themselves, and to these they
may add others as time goes on.

The Drawing-Room. 143

Take, for another example, the breakfast-cups ;
they may at first buy two very pretty cups and
saucers for their own use, and a third equally pretty
for their lady friend, or help, as they may like to
call her; and either title is honourable, only one
seems kinder than the other.

And so they need not purchase what is called a
whole set, or, more shopmanly, a "suite," comprising
a dozen of almost everything, whose chief merit
is in its completeness, of which we tire ; and this
merit is destroyed when on breaking one of the
two bread-and-butter plates we find it is a last
year's pattern, and cannot be matched at the shop
without its being specially made for us.

How much more we should be attached to a
pretty thing if we could say of it : " Don't you
remember we bought that cup when So-and-So
came to stay with us ? " Such associations endow
everyday objects with life.

The original outlay throughout the house may
proceed in like manner, and spare rooms may be
furnished after the other rooms.

This would enable more young people to marry,

144 Household Organization.

and they need not go to a shop whose advertise-
ments recommend them to furnish on the three
years' system, by the end of which time they will
have paid double the value of their furniture, and
most of it will probably be discarded, or broken in
pieces.

Perhaps a day may come when nobody will heed
an advertisement, and only look at a circular when
they write memoranda on its clean side. Then our
postmen will be spared the bulk of their work,
which makes it a perpetual Valentine's-day for
them.

It is too visionary to hope that our eyes may
cease to be distressed by posters blazing every-
where, or that nearly half of every book or
newspaper we buy may not be made up of
advertisements.

But no more on this irritating topic, as I would
only counsel those about to furnish not to be too
much tempted with novelties, especially patent
novelties.

Some of us are beginning to tire of the medi-
evalism which was the natural reaction from the

The D valuing- Room. 145

preposterous designs of the wall-papers, curtains,
and other furniture which disguised our rooms —
the ridiculous carpets with such patterns as
orange-blossoms tied with white satin favours
( " So sweet for a bride " ), and rugs with huge blue
roses.

But we have now gone too far the other way,
and made all our houses like " High " churches,
not permitting even the simplest unconventional
design to interfere with the severity of our Gothic
taste. This is a mistake ; for as our houses ought
not to be turned into Greek temples, as they were
in the time of the first French Empire, as little
should they be decorated like Gothic churches.

Many styles, and many beautiful yet diverse
objects, may be made to harmonize by tasteful
arrangement; and this freer latitude is well adapted
to our varied moods and our many-sided lives.
Few people of moderate means can carry out one
style in its entirety.

I have seen a very handsome drawing-room
fitted up perfectly in the Louis Quatorze style, and
spoiled by some German bead-mats on the table ;

L

146 Household Organization.

and some of the most beautiful upholstery I ever
saw, of Neo-Greek designs painted on straw-
coloured satin, covering chairs of purely Greek
form, looked droll on a Brussels carpet with fuchsias
upon it.

Twenty years ago, people of taste and pretension
to archaeological knowledge furnished their houses
in the Elizabethan style, with the result of uncom-
fortable furniture abounding in anachronisms.

The Queen Anne style, so fashionable at present,
is far better suited to modern requirements than
is the Elizabethan, which is of necessity kept ex-
clusively English. The Jacobean style too is less
rigid, as we may with propriety consider that much
French and Italian elegance had been imported
into the court of Scotland by the two French
queens and Mary Stuart. The possession of a por-
trait by Vandyke would be of itself enough to
make one wish to furnish a house in the stately
and elegant style of his time.

Although it may not be so pure in taste, the style
of the Renaissance is eminently adapted for com-
fortable household service. The delicate arabesques

The Drawing- Room. 147

and grotesques followed from Raffaelle's adorn-
ments of the Vatican are not too precious for use
in household decoration — where painting cannot be
expected to last as long as pictures framed and
out of reach of daily handling — and yet they are
graceful enough to refresh without exciting a tired
mind.

Any one possessing artistic taste and some train-
ing can work out these fanciful decorations for
home gratification, and being cherished, they will
last three or four times as long as the graining of
the house-painter. Besides, and this is a great
consideration in cities, all the majolica ornaments
and tiles, which are so suitable to this style of
decoration, will wash, and be bright and clear for
ever. Do not despise the Renaissance, for there is
much delight in it, though not of the highest kind.
We may keep the higher things for higher uses.

A Brussels carpet of Persian pattern is very nice
for a drawing-room, as it is unobtrusive, and yet
it is cheerful, and suits most styles of furniture.
This, like the dining-room carpet, had better be
made with a border, and so as to allow of a margin

148 Household Organization.

of the floor round it being varnished. If edged
with fringe its appearance is enriched ; and I do
not in practice find the fringe inconveniently
displaced by ladies' dresses, nor in dusting, as
I feared it might be when I added it to a carpet
which required enlarging.

The remarks on dining-room curtains and rods
apply equally here, as it is of great consequence
that the room should be easily cleaned.

For a young couple beginning to furnish, it may
be well to have some of the pretty cretonnes for
curtains and chair-coverings, which would last
clean and bright while better were being worked
on simple materials from patterns, either original
or borrowed from the Art Needlework Society.
Then the cretonne curtains might be hung in the
newly furnished spare bed-room. The chair-cover-
ings would be replaced one by one as others were
worked or nice materials met with.

In doing fancy-work, it is better to make one
good thing large enough to take a pride in, than
countless little elegances, such as mats, antimacas-
sars, table banner-screens, etc., which seldom last

The Drawing- Room. 149

long, and are terribly in the way. The time con-
sumed in making pincushions, pocket-tidies, and
tiny knick-knacks, would serve to tapestry a room,
let alone making curtains for it.

Where there are fine views from the windows,
they are better framed as pictures than curtained.
Draperies, if they are very beautiful, are more
favourably displayed when facing the light (as in
the case of portieres) than at the windows, where
they are liable to fade, and the light shining
through them hides their beauty. Draught more
often enters from doorways than by the windows ;
and in summer doors are often unhung for the
sake of coolness and additional space, and the
portieres are comfortable to use on chilly days.

Venetian blinds are the best of any interior
blinds, though window awnings are much plea-
santer in summer. Red tammy enriches the colour
of the room, but it is not agreeable to sit long in
a room filled with the flame-coloured light, though
this softens as the blinds fade, which they soon do.
Yellow blinds are very disagreeable, and tryingly
sunny in summer. Blue are as unpleasantly cold, and

150 Household Organization.

make people look like ghosts. White holland gives
as soft a light as any, and if carefully used the
blinds will not go awry. Green tammy is good,
but it soon fades.

With a gas fire there is no occasion for a hearth-
rug, though fur and other large rugs look very com-
fortable spread before the windows in winter, and
Indian mats look cool in summer, and preserve the
carpet from fading.

In buying furniture it is safer to move cautiously.
Seize, by all means, anything that strikes you as
being "just the very thing," the moment you see it,
or it may escape you for ever ; but do not be
beguiled into buying a whole " suite " of everything
at once, because you think you may as well finish
the work while you are about it, but let your taste,
as well as wisdom, have time to grow. We all
know the feeling of vexation we endure when we
have committed ourselves to any particular thing,
and find subsequently something which would have
suited us very much better.

WThatever you buy or make, do not let it be
rubbish. Things ill considered get dreadfully in

The D raw in g- Room. 151

our way, and by-and-by we cannot endure their
discordance; that is, if they last long enough for
us to weary of them. When you purchase any-
thing, remember that it has to be taken care of
and dusted every day, and the smaller the trifle
the more troublesome it is to keep clean. Think,
before you buy it, whether or not you will like it
when it is tarnished, and if you can value it suffi-
ciently to devote thought and a minute of time to
it every day for years.

We squander our money on frippery — not in
dress merely, but in hideous ornaments for our
fire-places, in antimacassars of disagreeably sug-
gestive name, in toys and trinkets and imitation
rubbish of all kinds, which encumber our table-
surfaces, and are dust-traps occupying the minds
and mornings of our parlour-maids to keep them
clean. We spend in this taste-destroying trash the
change of the twenty pounds which would have
bought one ornament of real beauty, which would
only take the same time to dust as one of the fifty
frivolities costing from half-a-crown to seven-and-
sixpence each.

152 Household Organization.

This is mostly so much waste, or worse, because
it helps the habit of foolish, ill-considered spend-
ing ; and while we thus bedizen our drawing-rooms,
we render them so uninhabitable that they fall out
of use for our own comfort, and become merely
show places for visitors.

A long article might be written on dusting. We
can hardly have too little of the carpet-broom
(which all housemaids love to use every week to
the detriment of our carpets), and hardly too much
of the feather-brush for lightly touching curtains,
walls, and pictures, or of the duster for rubbing
furniture. If a little is done daily, furniture will
never need polishing, but will always look bright,
as dust will not have entered the crevices.

It is easier, and also better for the durability of
carpets, to take them up occasionally to be beaten,
and have the dusty floor beneath them cleaned, than
to have everything smothered weekly in the dust
raised by the carpet-broom. A pair of steps is
necessary in a house where cleanliness is attended
to, to unhang curtains and pictures and replace
them after dusting. The walls need to be whisked
over weekly with the feather-brush.

The Drawing- Room. 153

The elegant china and glass gaseliers which are
now so general are easily cleaned with a damp
sponge ; those of Venetian glass are still more
beautiful, and not much more expensive : these also
can be washed with little trouble. Adopting the
plan of cleaning one room each day, it will not
take a great deal of time, or cause much fatigue ;
while the light daily dusting required is a mere
nothing to any one doing it dexterously.

I have a great dislike of chiffoniers ; the very
name presupposes them receptacles of chiffons and
lumber. I cannot see any use for them in a draw-
ing-room. Music-books should be in the music-
stand, a lady's work in her work-table, and books
either in use or put away in the book-case.

A portfolio-stand is of great service in preserving
and displaying drawings and prints which require
careful and practised handling. Sir Felix Slade,
the eminent print-collector, used to complain that
many persons, especially young ladies, made a bent
mark with their thumbs in the margin of an engrav-
ing ; he always insisted on having his prints taken
up by what he called their north-west corner, and

154 Household Organization.

carefully laid on the print-stand. A portfolio-stand
should have a piece of stuff laid over the books
and cases, wrapped inside the woodwork of the
stand. This is easily removed when the stand is
in use ; as it is left hanging down on one side, it
keeps much dust from the pictures, and if of some
nice silk or other stuff is ornamental in itself.

A sofa with a rack-end to let down at pleasure at
any angle is a great convenience, but such couches
are not often made, unless especially ordered.

Numerous mirrors injure the repose of a room,
causing bewilderment ; but one or two are pleasing,
as they have the effect of water in a landscape,
repeating the lines and echoing the forms of
objects. They also tend to give space, though not
to the same extent as pictures do, which are the
most decorative of all ornaments ; and when they
are very good they rank with our most precious
possessions.

Brackets may be appropriately used for orna-
ments, such as terra-cotta and others ; a few fine
bronzes, besides being handsome in themselves,
give value to the colouring of a room.

00

BED AND DRESSING ROOMS.

Ventilation — Window curtains and blinds — Bedsteads — Spring
mattresses — Towels — Danger of fire at the toilet — Mantelpiece —
Pictures and frames — Superfluous necessaries — Taine's criticisms
— Aids to reading in bed — Service of the bath — Improvements
in washstands — Arranging the rooms— Attics made beautiful —
Sick-rooms — Neatness — Disinfectants — Chlorine gas — Condy's
solution — Filters — Invalid chairs — Generous efforts of the
medical profession to improve the national health.

We pass a third of our time in our bed-rooms when
we are in health, and the whole of it when we are
ill ; therefore their ventilation and general arrange-
ment demand our most earnest consideration.

Some bed-rooms are draughty, occasioning cold
and neuralgia, but the more common fault is that
they are not airy enough ; for with our extreme
attention to what is called " English comfort," we

156 Household Organization.

too frequently make our bed-rooms almost air-
tight.

This causes restlessness by night and headache
by day. It were far better to accustom ourselves
to sleep with our windows open, as the night air
is not at all injurious in dry weather, unless an
east wind is blowing. We must be guided by the
weather, and trim to the wind ; our feeling will
tell us whether we may, or may not, safely leave
our windows open much more surely than the
almanac. The time when windows should be
shut throughout the house is when the dew is
rising and falling ; then the damp enters and
saturates everything.

People seldom attend to this point, but keep
their windows open too late in the afternoon,
which in Italy is recognized as the dangerous time.
We have but little malaria in England, but what
little there is is at work just before and after sun-
set. Many persons, too, who like myself have
immense faith in fresh air, throw open their
windows on leaving their rooms in the morning,
regardless of whether the air be dry and warm, or

Bed and Dressing Rooms. 157

whether a fog or bitter east wind will penetrate
the whole house to damp or chill it. It is more
prudent, in case of bleak or raw weather, to wait
for an hour or two before opening the windows,
ventilation from the door being sufficient for the
room while it is empty.

It is useless to lay down laws as to the windows
in our variable climate. We must work by our
natural thermometer, and let our skin perform one
of its most useful functions and tell us whether it is
cold or hot ; but if our feelings are uncertain, give
judgment in favour of fresh air.

If your rooms have the old-fashioned long and
narrow windows which are always found in houses
built in the reigns of the early Georges, the
Japanese paper curtains, being very cheap, are
as good as any, the intention being to drape a
skeleton window, which curtainless is a dismal
object.

But more modern windows should not, or at
least need not, have long hanging curtains, but
only just sufficient to cover the window without
leaving a streak of light. The drapery may hang

158 Hotisehold Organization.

from one side or from both, according to taste ;
but unless you are very particular to admit no
light in your bed-room, a mere valance, or some
ornament at the top of the window, is enough.
For instance, some pretty design in fretwork, as
the tracery of an Arabian arch, made of deal
an inch thick, cut out with a steam saw and
stained or enamelled black, would be effective
when lined with rose colour, or any drapery suited
to your room ; and you might furnish an appro-
priate design for the fretwork. This would be
easily dusted, and is not expensive.

White blinds are clean and pleasant for bed-
rooms, but dark-green ones are better for persons
with weak sight ; either these or Venetian blinds
are very useful where there are no shutters.

Brass and iron bedsteads have almost entirely
superseded wooden ones, and they are generally
made without fittings for curtains. Indeed, in our
well-built modern houses there are so few draughts
to be guarded against that curtains are seldom
necessary.

In bed-rooms of the present time valances to the

Bed and Dressing Rooms. 159

beds are quite superfluous, as the bed-round is
completely out of fashion. This was the name
of the breadth of carpet which went round three
sides of the bed, leaving the remainder of the floor
bare. The fashion was healthy and economical,
certainly, but it was tryingly ugly and cheerless.

For a bed-room, nothing is so good as the square
carpet, with a broad margin of the floor stained
and varnished, as this is very easily taken up for
the floor and carpet to be cleaned. The carpet
must be laid down the first time by a man from
the carpet-warehouse, so that it may be evenly
stretched, which is seldom done by a carpenter ;
but after that it is easily spread, as it remains
in shape, and needs very few nails to keep it in
position.

Bed-room carpets need not have brown paper
laid under them, though this is an advantage in
other rooms, as it keeps dust and draught from
coming through the cracks of the floor, besides
saving the carpet from being cut by the edges of
the boards. Kidderminster carpets are now made
in very nice patterns, and are quite suitable for

160 Household Organization.

bed-rooms where Brussels carpets may be thought
too expensive.

A hearth-rug is more useful in a bed-room
than elsewhere, as a bed-room fire should be of coal
or wood, and not of gas, as this is injurious in a
bed-room.

Take care never to let the head of the bed be
placed before the fire-place. This is sometimes
foolishly done, and unsuspecting sleepers get
neuralgia from it. In summer a pretty pattern,
cut out in tissue-paper so as to resemble lace,
tacked on a slight frame covered with black
tarletane, and fitted into the fire-place, allows
ventilation and keeps out the dust from the
chimney. Little girls love to cut these fire-papers,
and one of them, with care, lasts two summers,
and often three.

When there are no bed-curtains, it is sometimes
advisable to line the ironwork at the head of
the bed, so that the sleeper may not be exposed
to draught. Spring mattresses, with soft woollen
mattresses upon them, are the most comfortable
beds of any ; and Heal's folding spring mattresses,

Bed and Dressing Rooms. 161

though expensive, cannot be too strongly recom-
mended. These spring beds are so easily made
up, that this is a matter of very trifling considera-
tion in any house where there are two pairs of
hands, children's or grown-up people's. It is
necessary to turn back the bed-clothes completely
over the foot of the bed, and leave it to air for
an hour, at least, after the window has been
opened. There is a great fancy now for having
trimmed pillow-covers, and pieces of ornamental
needlework to spread over the bed after it is
turned down ; the fashion is pretty, but super-
fluous, as a nicely worked counterpane looks
equally well, and need not be folded up at bed-
time.

Towels may, and should be, ornamented, but not
so much as to make them inconvenient for use.
The collection of linen exhibited by the Duchess
of Edinburgh gave many of us an interesting
lesson in things of this kind. One of the silliest
pieces of finery seen in a bed or dressing room is
the trimmed towel-horse cover. Towels cannot
possibly dry if the evaporation is stopped, and

M

1 62 Household Organization.

even when the cover is made of thin muslin, it is
only a troublesome frivolity.

Every lady has her own particular taste about
her toilet-table, so that I only give a caution to
let it be safe, and not liable to take fire. We
frequently want candles on our dressing-tables ;
therefore it stands to reason that the veil often
placed over the looking-glass is highly dangerous.
This drapery is intended to keep the sun from
scorching the back of the glass, but it is safer
to stand the glass elsewhere than in the window
when the room is exposed to the midday sun,
although it will not be so pleasant for use.

The rose-lined white muslin petticoat which was
once such a popular way of concealing a deal
dressing-table is highly dangerous. Indeed, it is
difficult to conceive any combination more in-
flammable than the veiled glass set in the midst
of cotton window-curtains, and two candles stand-
ing on a cotton toilet-cover, with a frilled muslin
pincushion between them, and full muslin drapery
below.

The most convenient table allows the large

Bed and Dressing Rooms. 16^

g vu'c,/"01 ±K^o

square-seated stool, so comfortable to sit on while
dressing the hair, to be pushed under it when not
in use. When light ornaments are placed on a
bed-room mantelpiece and exposed to a current
of air, it is advisable to have two upright pieces
of board, painted, cut out, or otherwise made
ornamental, placed one on each side of the shelf
to protect the knick-knacks from being blown
down ; and if these are numerous, one or two
shelves may be put above the mantelpiece, form-
ing a pretty little museum of curiosities which
may be too small, or too trifling, to be placed
with advantage in the drawing-room ; and houses
of the class I am describing seldom have a
boudoir. If the mantelpiece is covered with
cloth or velvet, the shelves and back might be
covered with the same, and this would be very
becoming to the ornaments. Tunisian or point
lace forms a very good edging to a mantelboard,
and when a foot deep, or nearly so, it is extremely
handsome. Water-colour sketches should abound
in a bed-room, souvenirs of places we have visited,
or of friends who have made the drawings, being

164 Household Organization.

doubly enjoyed when we are recovering from ill-
ness, or when we are awake early in the summer
morning. Sketches are as pleasant as books, with-
out the trouble of holding them up to our eyes.
They should be carefully arranged so as not to look
spotty ; and they must be hung flat against the
wall by having the rings placed high in the frames,
as, although it is becoming to the pictures, the
effect of them hanging much forward makes many
people giddy, and in an invalid will sometimes
produce a feeling akin to sea-sickness.

Neatly made frames of the cheap German gilding
(which will wash) answer very well for sketches
hung in the less prominent situations in a bed-
room, and bring a luxury within the reach of many
who would not otherwise afford it.

Now I am come to the difficult part of my
subject — the tug of war, in fact — for I want men to
do something for themselves, and women to do
without something dear to their hearts. I think I
will speak of the latter clause first.

In bed-rooms especially is seen that truly English
love of superfluous comforts which we mistake for

Bed and Dressing Rooms. i6,

civilization : it meets us everywhere, in and out of
the house, but it abounds in our bed and dressing
rooms.

The amount of toilet so-called necessaries is
incredible, and the number of patent objects over-
whelming. When we consider that seven things
only are necessary to our personal neatness and
cleanliness — soap, sponge, towel, and tooth-brush
for washing, and brush and comb and nail-scissors
for the rest of the toilet — and then count the other
paraphernalia seen in our dressing-rooms, we shall
discover how many frivolous trades our superfluities
maintain, to say nothing of ingenuity misplaced
in making advertisements of dressing-cases and
hair-restorers conspicuously attractive.

The toilet-table is not alone to blame : the fault
pervades the whole house and overwhelms the
bed-rooms.

M. Taine, in his " Notes on England," amusingly
describing an English house, says, " In my bed-
room is a table of rosewood, standing on an oil-
cloth mat on the carpet ; upon this table is a slab
of marble, on the marble a round straw mat — all

1 66 Household Organization.

this to bear an ornamented water-bottle covered
with a tumbler. One does not simply place one's
book on a table : upon the table is a small stand
for holding it. One does not have a plain candle-
stick : the candle is enclosed in a glass cylinder,
and is furnished with a self-acting extinguisher.
All this apparatus hampers ; it involves too much
trouble for the sake of comfort."

This was only a bachelor's room ; what would
the French critic have thought of the aids to
reading in bed in an ordinarily well-appointed
bed-room where the master indulges in that
practice ?

By the Englishman's bedside is also a small table
standing on a mat, and on this table another mat
supporting a patent stand which screws up and
down, and on this another mat with a candlestick
with a nozzle and a patent protector of the candle
from the draught, a glass shield set in an ormolu
frame which has an elaborate screw ; and by the
side of the candlestick-stand another mat, on which
is a patent screw for shading the light from the
aforesaid candle. Then, besides the extinguisher,

Bed and Dressing Rooms. 167

also on a stand and a mat, and patent matches in
a patent box, he is supplied with a book-rest
which will turn in every possible way, with a patent
leaf-turner and leaf-holder, and a variety of other
little conveniences. He only lacks an electric com-
munication between the fire-escape outside and
the patent night-bolt on his door, to prevent
him being burnt in his bed, to make the thing
complete.

We feel how difficult we have made life by
having to put all these indispensables to their
intended use. We have multiplied these patent
gimcracks until we cannot move without being
crushed by our comforts ; and the keeping of all
this in order obliges us to have under us a parlour-
maid, an upper housemaid, and an under house-
maid, to wait upon these inventions. Helps, in
one of his essays, says, " I have always maintained
that half the work of the world is useless, if sub-
jected to severe scrutiny. My idea of organization
would be to diminish much of this useless work."
The same remark applies to our luggage when we
travel. We take things fancying. We may want

1 68 Household Organization.

them, forgetting that it is easier to do without an
article once, than to have the trouble of packing
it and looking after it every day ; so we bury our
pleasure under a heap of care.

I must give another extract from Taine's de-
scription of his bed-room before I proceed to my
second great battle-field, where I fear a harder
contest.

After describing his dressing-table, Taine goes
on to say of his washstand : " It is furnished with
one large jug, one small one, a medium one for
hot water, two porcelain basins, a dish for tooth-
brushes, two soap-dishes, a water-bottle with its
tumbler, a finger-glass with its glass. Underneath
is a very low table, a sponge, another basin, a large
shallow zinc bath for morning bathing. In a cup-
board is a towel-horse with four towels of different
kinds, one of them thick and rough. Napkins are
under all the vessels and utensils ; to provide for
such a service, when the house is occupied, it is
necessary that washing should be always going on.
The servant comes four times a day into the rooms :
in the morning to draw the blinds and the curtains,

Bed and Dressing Rooms. 169

open the inner blinds, carry off the boots and
clothes, and bring a large can of hot water with
a fluffy towel on which to place the feet ; at mid-
day and at seven in the evening to bring water
and the rest, in order that the visitor may wash
before luncheon and dinner ; at night to shut the
window, arrange the bed, get the bath ready,
renew the linen ; — all this with silence, gravity, and
respect. Pardon these trifling details, but they
must be handled in order to figure to one's self the
wants of an Englishman in the direction of his
luxury : what he expends in being waited upon
and comfort is enormous, and one may laughingly
say that he spends the fifth of his life in his tub."

Men will do much for glory and for vainglory,
even to using cold shower-baths in winter, and boast
of breaking the ice in them ; but I never yet heard
of a man who would take the trouble to empty his
bath after using it. Now I maintain that every
man who has not a valet ought to do this. Few
men consider the hard work it is to a woman to
carry upstairs heavy cans of water; but that is
trifling, compared with the difficulty to a woman

170 HottseJiold Organization.

of turning the water out of a large flat bath into a
pail A man would find little difficulty in doing
this ; his arms are longer, his back stronger, and his
dress does not come in the way.

When a man likes to have his bath regularly —
and who does not ? — he should think of the labour
that half a dozen or more baths entail, and in the
evening prepare his can of water for to-morrow's
use, place his own bath on his piece of oil-cloth,
enjoy his tub to his heart's content, pour away the
water, put up his tub, and say nothing about it.

This disagreeable lecture over, we will go on and
see how easy the general dressing-room arrange-
ments might be made.

If, instead of our ordinary washstands with their
jugs and basins, we had fixed basins with plugs in
them and taps above, much of the water-bearing
difficulty would be obviated. These washstands
should be placed back to back, as it were, in every
two rooms, having only the partition-wall between
them, so that the same pipe would supply two
taps.

I have three sorts of basins in use in my house :

Bed and Dressing Rooms. 171

one kind has the ordinary tap and plug, another kind
has handles for supply and waste, the water being-
sucked away on turning the waste handle. This
is safe for careless people who let rings or any
other articles drop in the basin, and nothing but
water can go down to choke the pipe. But the
basin I find easiest and most pleasant to use, tilts
out the water by lifting a handle, or rather finger-
niche, in front of the basin ; and when this is let fall
it strikes on an india-rubber pad beneath the tap,
so that the basin cannot be cracked. All these
different basins are fitted into marble washstands
with dishes for soap and tooth-brushes hollowed in
the marble, with holes for drainage connected
with the waste-pipe below. These conveniences,
with a housemaid's-closet with sink and tap on the
same floor, save all carrying up and down of pails
and cans of water, and, in fact, the heaviest part of
a housemaid's work.

Where the hall is warmed by hot-water pipes,
water from the same source will supply the bed-
rooms. It will be warm if the first quart is allowed
to flow away. Or the pipes may be connected

172 Household Organization.

with the kitchen boiler, which, in the case of our
kitchen on the ground floor, will not be so expen-
sive as where the pipes have to communicate with
the basement.

Supplying the taps is perfectly easy when only
cold water is required, and children and delicate
persons may be indulged with jugs of warm water,
which, however, every boy using should fetch for
himself. We should thus be able to dispense with
ewers and toilet-cans, which would at once pay for
the fitting of the pipe and tap to each room.

It is better and nicer to use filtered water for the
toilet-decanter, and not water drawn directly from
the cistern, unless it has been tested and found
pure. In such a case, which is rare, no decanter
will be needed, unless we like to have a Venetian
glass one for the sake of its beauty.

Let all persons, in dressing, replace the things
they have used, and spread their towels on the
horse to dry ; then the rooms will be set in order
for the day, only needing the daily dusting, which
will be done after the beds are made. Boys and
girls who go to school should make their beds

Bed and Dressing Rooms. 173

before they go, so they must open them to air
immediately they get up.

" These seem little things : and so they are
unless you neglect them " {Sir A. Helps).

Everybody should have his or her own ward-
robe, and keep it in order. Men and boys and
little children will have everything neatly made
and mended for them, and laid in its proper place ;
so all they have to do is to leave the drawers as
tidy as they found them, taking heed not to lose
their gloves and neckties ; the larger things take
care of themselves. The secret of keeping one's
clothes tidy is not to have too many.

Of course, where there are no servants to provide
for, the house has fewer rooms than a family of the
same size requires in our present experience, and
the uglier part of the house is abolished, or where
not abolished, is converted from servants' bed-rooms
and attics — unpleasant, dusty, and ill furnished ;
redolent of tallow candle, shoes, brushes, and stale
perfumery ; with closed windows and the floor
strewn with old letters, hair-pins, half-empty match-
boxes, and dogs-eared penny novels^-into a bower-

174 Household Organization.

like study or morning-room, where a young lady
may entertain herself and her own especial visitors.
I have even known an attic in Baker Street so con-
verted by the invention and taste of a young lady,
as to live in one's recollection as as pretty a summer
room as any country rectory could boast, by being
papered .with bright flowery paper all over its
sloping roof, and its window made cheerful with
climbing plants and flowers ; tasteful draperies, a
work-table and work-basket in embroidered green
satin, book-shelves carved by friends, a piano just
good enough for practising upon, and water-colour
drawings on the walls.

I have known another room, cheaply fitted up
in a French style by a French lady, as a dressing-
room, with looking-glass wardrobe and painted
furniture. A small bed in an alcove, in case the
room might be wanted as a spare room, and lace
curtains drawn over the alcove. The head of the
bed and all its plain wood-work covered in quilted
white cotton in large diamonds, and cross-barred
with narrow blue satin ribbon, and large blue
bows here and there. The walls papered with

Bed and Dressing Rooms. i 75

a paper resembling quilted muslin. The effect
was soft, clean, and extremely pretty.

A few words on the topic of sick-rooms before
quitting this part of the subject.

In cases of severe illness it is advisable to engage
a professed nurse. She is a great help to the
physician, and a support to the family, who too
often, in their love for the sufferer, overtax their
strength, and break down at the moment this is
most required. No person can long sustain night
and day nursing, particularly if to bodily fatigue
anxiety and distress of mind be added ; nor can
they keep up that appearance of cheerfulness
which is such a support to a sick person. It is
a great mistake to attempt to do this in any case,
but more especially if it is likely to be a prolonged
illness. A sister of mercy is often found a most
valuable member of the household under such cir-
cumstances. People often talk of not having had
their clothes off for a fortnight. One's first thought
on hearing this said is, how glad you will be to
take a bath ! And one's second thought, what
good did it do the patient ?

176 Household Organization.

The sick-room should be kept as much as pos-
sible in its usual order. The paraphernalia of
illness distresses the sick person, causing nervous-
ness. Do not let physic bottles be visible in all
directions, or the patient will never feel well, and
those in attendance will fancy they have caught
the infection, simply because they are nauseated
with the smell of the medicines, and the disagree-
able sight of their dregs left about in spoons and
glasses. The medicines that have to be given
at stated hours should be neatly placed in readi-
ness on a small tray, near the clock if possible,
so that they may be remembered and the hours
observed. Keep perfect cleanliness and neatness
in the room, and avoid clatter. Wear thin shoes,
and do not let your dress rustle. A woman's hand
should at every touch improve or replace some-
thing, so that there may never be a great bustle
of setting to rights. We have already spoken at
length of ventilation : in sickness it must be par-
ticularly attended to, as fresh air is the most
beneficial of all medicines.

At the time of the great cattle-plague, fumiga-

Bed and Dressing Rooms. 1 77

tion with chlorine gas was advocated, and bene-
ficially employed, by Professor Stone, of Owen's
College, Manchester. It is simple for domestic

use.

One teaspoonful of powdered chlorate of potash

should be loosely stirred together with three table-
spoonfuls of dry sand in an empty dry pickle
bottle; add to this nearly an ounce of muriatic
acid ; stand the bottle on some warm embers in
an old Australian-meat tin, or other receptacle of
this kind, and place it (with the embers in it)
on a shelf, or somewhere high up in the room,
taking care not to scorch the wood-work. The
heavy chlorine gas will descend and so fill all
parts of the room, and in about three hours disin-
fection will be complete.

It would be a good thing if district-visitors, and
other charitable persons, would instruct the clergy
and their poor people in such effectual means of
stamping out infection.

In all hospitals " Condy's solution " is placed
with the water and towels for the use of the visit-
ing medical men. It is highly advisable to keep

N

178 Household Organization.

this in every house for cleansing and disinfecting
purposes, and for the removal of unpleasant smells.
It is useful in cleansing bird-cages and gun-barrels,
in preparing poultry or game, and in many other
ways.

The solution may be made at home. The
British Pharmacopoeia allows four grains of the per-
manganate of potash (the basis of the solution)
to the fluid ounce. It is chiefly for external use.
The permanganate of potash is sold in crystals
of two kinds : the most expensive is the purple,
which is used in what is called the ozonized water,
a very weak solution of permanganate, sold by
chemists for toilet use. The cheaper and more
general disinfectant is a greenish coarse powder,
sold by any honest chemist at under five shillings
a pound. It may be bought of the General Apo-
thecaries' Company, 49, Berner's Street, London, for
from three shillings a pound to three-and-sixpence,
as it varies with the market ; and this does as well
as Condy's patent, and is 500 per cent, cheaper,
as fourteen gallons of disinfectant may be prepared
from a pound of the powdered crystals, and these

Bed and Dressing Rooms. 1 79

again will be extensively diluted for use. The
purple crystals may be bought by the ounce.

Be cautious in using this fluid, or the Condy,
whichever you may happen to prefer, as it turns
almost everything brown that it touches. Very
deep stains will never come out ; slight stains wash
and wear out after a time, but china and all white
ware, and sponges and brushes, have their appear-
ance greatly injured by it. Bed-room floors may
be washed with it ; they will be thoroughly puri-
fied, and the colour will be as if they were stained
dark oak previous to being varnished. Stains will
wear off the hands in a few days, and a weak solu-
tion will not discolour them. The purple fluid is a
test of water — if it turns brown the water is impure.
It decolorizes on contact with animal matter.

It is a useful plan to keep a filter on every floor
of a house ; the expense is not very great, while
the increased safety is incalculable. Spencer's
patent, or magnetic-carbide, filter is one of the best.
He imitated nature's process when constructing it,
having observed that the purest water filtered
through oxide of iron in the earth's strata.

180 Hoiisehold Organization.

Two articles of furniture will be found of great
use in a sick-room. One is a chair back with bars
of broad webbing, made to lift up and down like
the music-desk of a grand piano. This is a most
comfortable support to an invalid when sitting up
to take food or medicine. When closed flat it will
slip easily under the pillow, and it can be raised
gently and gradually to the angle required. The
other thing is an arm-chair, stood and fastened on
a board with four French castors. This is a great
assistance in cases of lameness or extreme weak-
ness, as it is easy for the invalid to sit on it and be
wheeled to any part of the room ; and it costs less
than a wheeled chair.

None of the learned professions have advanced
during the last thirty years so much as the medical.
Medicine has become a new science since it has
taken hold of the sanitary improvement of our
towns and dwellings. The profession, with a dis-
interestedness and devotion to science worthy of
liberal minds, combines to make the prevention of
disease its aim, even beyond its cure. It forms
a noble co-operative society.

Bed and Dressing Rooms. 1 8 1

At the last meeting of the British Medical Asso-
ciation at Sheffield, it was most truly said that
independent medical officers of health would before
long change the character of disease throughout
the nation, and save future generations much
misery. It is to be hoped that the country, which
will reap the benefit of their endeavours, will
strengthen the hands of those whose efforts are
directed to raising the standard of national health.

1 82 Household Organization.

THE EDUCATION OF GIRLS.

To what age should boys' and girls' education be alike ? — Accomplish-
ments fruitlessly taught — Nursery and School-room government
— Helplessness — Introduction to society — The convent system —
Unhappy results — Scientific education — Geometrical illustration
— Religion — Professional life for women — Home training — Varied
knowledge— Companionship of a mother — Experience — Kindness
—Truth.

At what age should the training of boys and girls
begin to differ ? This is a doubtful point, though
we may consider that as, until about the age of
fourteen, their nature has been much the same,
their strength of mind and body nearly equal, and
their tastes and dispositions much alike, this may
be the time when their training should begin to
follow each its own path ; as the boy's strength
grows from this time beyond that of the girl,

The Education of Girls. 183

while she becomes more remarkable for the in-
creasing delicacy of her skill.

Practically there is a divergence when their
clothing begins to differ, but this is merely arti-
ficial. The girl is made to wear finer and more
delicate clothing than the boy ; its texture and
form impede her movements, and it is more easily
injured by the weather. But where a girl is
sensibly dressed, so that her clothes will not spoil
with the rain, nor prevent her moving her limbs
freely, this diversity between the two disappears.

But although it will not harm a girl to share her
brother's pursuits till the age of fourteen, the con-
ditions of her so doing will depend upon cir-
cumstances. Except in the case of twins, the
boy will be rather older or younger than the girl,
if even she have brothers about her own age at
all, and many accidents will be found to control
her education. Besides these, nature works gradu-
ally, and there are seldom abrupt transitions in her
processes. The girl's future skill of hand and the
boy's strength of arm will be prepared for, and
seen, in their differences of taste and choice of

184 Household Orgaitization.

pursuits and games ; the girl will prefer working
for her doll and protecting it from the boy's rough
handling, and the boy will love his bat and knife.
He will show his instinct for construction, and she
hers for preservation, after the first early stage
when both alike delight in destruction. Here
education comes into use, leading each child to
exercise the good instinct instead of its converse.

When the conventional proprieties are not
allowed to warp the natural taste, a girl loves
running and climbing as well as the boy does :
she likes to collect stamps, minerals, fossils, birds'
eggs, insects, etc., fully as much as he does. Their
favourite books are identical, their scrap-books
equally enjoyed, the theatre and theatricals at
home delighted in by both, and their pets are
much beloved. Why, then, should we make so
much difference between them where Nature has
created none ?

. Girls of the upper classes are always at lessons
of some kind from six years old to eighteen ; thus
they have twelve years of instruction, and we know
that of old a seven year's apprenticeship was held

The Education of Girls, 185

sufficient to make a master in some craft. What
do the twelve years do for our girls ? Does their
training enable them to maintain them decently
in any one line ? What have they learnt, and what
can they do ?

They have learnt music enough to play a
morceaa de salo?i showily, and the allegretto move-
ment of a sonata stumblingly, and the latter only
because it was thought ' proper ' that they should
learn ' classical music' But they do not know
enough even to learn another morceau de salon
without the help of a master, so of course music
cannot be reckoned upon as doing much for them.

I place music first, because the most time has
been given to it ; a weary hour every day, had
it not been so broken up by visits to the clock.
Practical girls grudge this hour wasted on a weak-
ness they are sure to give up when they marry, for
they all think they are as certain to marry as to
give up their music. They are healthy and strong
and have good voices, but few of them can do
more than incomprehensibly murmur a few lines
of twaddle to a feeble accompaniment, or sing out

1 86 Household Organization.

of all time the top line of a glee, provided the
piano helps them out with the notes. So here is a
physical gift thrown aside.

Can anything be made of that pencil-stroking
on buff paper, with some splashes of white, which
is held to represent a cottage, flanked on one side
by a gate-post which could never have been a good
gate-post, and on the other side by something
smeary which is not at all like a tree, nor any other
created thing ?

Every willow-pattern plate has a better land-
scape on it than that. So there are two hours
a week gone, for the lop-sided chalk head is of
no more use to anybody than was the landscape.

The girl has been taught French and German,
but has not learnt enough of either language to
enjoy a good book, or to converse with intelligence
in either tongue, and her stock of dialogue-book
phrases is soon exhausted. Indeed, she can hardly
talk better in English when she gets beyond the
depth of drawing-room chatter, as her knowledge
of facts is of a most uncertain sort ; so in general
conversation she covers her deficiencies by slang,

The Education of Girls. 187

which, although it distresses us, we forgive in a
pretty, lively girl.

She cannot cook, how should she ? She was
never permitted to peep inside the kitchen, but
was kept in an upstairs nursery until she was six
years old,, under the stultifying dominion of
" nurse," whose sole training was " Miss, I'll tell
your ma," when wicked or cruel teaching did not
replace this feebleness. When she was promoted
to the school-room and made over to the care of
the governess, the system of instruction was little
more satisfactory. The list of the Kings of
England superseded standing in the corner as a
punishment for wreariness, but her chief experience
of life was gathered from tales in cheap magazines,
read surreptitiously ; and as she grew older, the
railway novel by a sensational author replaced
the serial in the penny paper.

The child saw her parents together for a quarter
of an hour in the evening, when she was full
dressed to go down to dessert, and her mother
for about five minutes in the course of the morn-
ing, when she came up to the school-room to find

1 88 Household Organization.

fault with the governess for the children's bad
grammar, or awkward behaviour, on the previous
evening. The round of the year brings the sea-
side visit. Here, although health is gained, there
is no education beyond lodging-house gossip. The
children are put into the train like so many parcels,
and in so many hours are somewhere else ; frocks
suited to the sea-side are put on them by the
nurse, but these might have dropped from the
clouds, and the children have been none the wiser.
Helplessness is the natural outcome of all this.

The school-room course begins in about six years
to be agreeably diversified by the visits of music
and drawing-masters ; which, if the governess did
not sit in the room all the time, trying to attract
their admiration, would be a really pleasant change.
But nothing comes of the lessons beyond the showy
morceau de salon aforesaid, the buff-paper drawing,
and the weak rhyme jingled to an accompaniment
in quavers ; except an increase of energy in borrow-
ing, or hiring, yellow-covered books revealing stir-
ring impossibilities in the lives of Edwin and
Angelina, over which a girl, according to her

The Education of Girls. 189

disposition, may weep or rage. For this is the
only outlet for her poor imprisoned life, until, on
her introduction to society, she is suddenly flung
upon the world, to make her way as best, or worst,
she can ; and now, and now only, does her real
education begin.

This manner of bringing up our girls differs from
the convent system in this, that it is worldly instead
of being religious, and needlework and confec-
tionery are worse taught ; other things are about
equal. Both we and our continental neighbours
imprison our girls in a school-room or convent for
twelve years, and yet boast of our superiority over
the Turks !

After this, can we wonder at the weakness or the
folly of girls, or be surprised that society is at a
dead-lock, or that our women eat bitter bread ?

Can we marvel that women ruin their husbands
by their dress and extravagance ; that they drive
them to their clubs for companionship, and freedom
from the wretchedness of home ; that they tyran-
nize over their milliners, and are in their turn
tyrannized over by their servants ; that their

190 Household Organization.

sons drink the brandy and smoke the tobacco of
idleness, and that their daughters grow up the
patterns of themselves ? Only where the mother
is passively useless, the daughter will be actively
mischievous ; where the mother was merely frivo-
lous, the daughter will be actually wicked.

• Does all our boasted culture come to this; or
will Cambridge examinations and a scientific educa-
tion set all right again ? When an hour a day, at
least, for twelve years passed in the study of music
has failed to implant those habits of accuracy
which this beautiful science so pre-eminently com-
bines with sweetness and grace, is a smattering of
geology certain to succeed ? Will Greek strengthen
the character more than German ? Or is one as
likely as the other to puff the mind with conceit,
where it does not equally encourage a deceitful
appearance of knowledge. And is the new system
better calculated than the old one to prepare girls
for fifty years of womanhood ?

People talk of depth, as if truth were only to be
found at the bottom of a well. What seems most
wanted is breadth, free expansion all round to keep

The Education of Girls. 191

the soul healthy. Let every branch have due
encouragement to stretch out towards the light, to
receive the shower or sunshine as they come.

Some careful mothers say, " I keep my girls
exclusively at ' studies ' for the piano ; they make
such a good groundwork." This may be so, but
finger training is not everything. The poor girls
have had their souls so sickened over melancholy
minor "meditations," that their hearts are closed
to the tender or joyous melodies of music, and its
rich, majestic harmonies.

Point out these things to the young, who will
love them, at first blindly, and afterwards with a
gradually developing appreciation.

Here a little, there a little, is a true precept in
education. A thing can never be completely
taught, for there is infinity everywhere. How
rarely we can begin at the beginning, or even the
unit, of anything ; multiplication and subdivision
meet us at both ends, besides all the collaterals.

I have ever observed that those girls who have
been the greatest number of years at the same
school know the least, and are the most stupid.

192 Household Organization.

It is better to let children go to many different
schools in succession, than to remain long in one :
they gain more experience, while the chances of
their learning evil are the same in both cases. In
public schools as boys go up through the forms,
they meet different sets of masters and subjects of
study, so that these are, in fact, fresh schools.

To use a simile which will be intelligible to this
generation, women have been treated as if they
were stones. Left shapeless under the school-room
prison system, they are only fit to be broken up
for the roads, as they will fit in nowhere. Our well-
educated ancestresses, down to the time of Hannah
More, were formed into cubes, very solid and steady
on either of their bases, and suitable for many
buildings, though the finer kinds of stone are in
this manner misapplied. Modern science gives
the stones more sides, and, while seeming to round
them into more adaptable forms, only produces a
number of small facets, making a somewhat
polished dodecahedron, which rolls about in any
position and is of no particular service, except,
maybe, to stick upon a gate-post at a girl's school,

The Education of Girls. 193

though it has given a great deal of trouble in the
cutting. But the hourly guidance of the loving
hands of father and mother, aided by raspings and
filings of circumstances, and many blows from
chisels more or less severe, produces at last a beau-
tiful statue, well shaped in all its parts, which
becomes a perfect and nobly planned Galatea.
What is the best training for girls ? That is the
question. What are they to be, or not to be ?

We have tried hitherto to bring up our girls so
that they may be fitted for the high position here
that we all wish they may attain, making their
education tend solely to pleasure ; forgetting how
easily the nature of woman adapts itself to any
superior station, and how soon it seems like every-
day life, however high the rank or great the
wealth to which a girl may be suddenly raised.

We teach religion, when it is taught at all, under
the head of " divinity," at school, where it is put
on a par with the multiplication-table; or as a
series of " religious duties," to be performed once
a week and rendered as irksome as possible, quite
ignoring that everything we do is our duty towards

o

194 Household Organization.

God, or towards our neighbour, which is part of the
same duty; whereas we ought to train our girls
for "duties" here, and give them joy in preparing
for their high position as daughters of God in
heaven. We should let our divine life so permeate
through every hour of our stay here, that it may be
the vivifying light shed upon everything we are
concerned with, making the trifles of this life unfold
their beauties, comforting sadness and gilding
poverty, as the southern sunshine lights up
squalid dwellings till they shine like gold and
silver, and makes rags glow with light and colour.

Our ideas have changed lately, and now we
seem to think that all girls who are not born to
high position here must of necessity be trained to
professional life. But, after all, the demand for
certified teachers, heads of ladies' colleges, doctors,
and other learned professions, will never comprise
the great bulk of the number of willing workers
among the unmarried women of England : nor do
these things constitute a quarter of the work to be
done.

Instances of marked talent or decided turn for

The Editcation of Girls. 195

some particular line of study should be furthered
and fostered to the utmost, consistently with the
possibility that after all the vocation may not be
carried into effect ; but women are really more
valuable, and more likely to be happy, in what it is
old-fashioned to call the sphere of a home.

And this is best prepared for by home training ;
which does not mean being pushed aside so as to
be out of the way, and shut up in the nursery or
school-room, but enjoying the companionship of
a judicious and sensible mother, and the freedom
of the house — where the child will be taught to
behave herself properly, and be useful and obliging ;
where she will have regular hours of study with her
mother, her governess, or at school, and yet have
opportunities of seeing how everything is managed
in the kitchen and throughout the house, being
allowed occasionally to do some little thing herself,
and so acquire some of the needful practice ; where
she can be taught needlework and the proper use
of many tools ; learn to carve, to cut bread and
butter, to help dishes neatly at table, and gain
a knowledge of gardening and green-house culture.

196 Household Organization.

Children should be permitted to look on at the
proceedings of all workmen employed in or out of
the house : the glazier, gasfitter, gardener, carpet-
stretcher, carpenter, locksmith, and piano-tuner ;
the exceptions being the dustman and the sweep,
because of the dirt.

How much money might be saved in a house
if people understood the use of a few tools, the
construction of a few fittings, or could take a piano
to pieces and tune it. If a bell-wire is broken,
a man is sent for ; he charges half a day's work and
some materials, and generally makes a little bit of
work for some other tradesman, whereas a know-
ledge of how to unscrew and take off the bell-cover
would often enable a piece of copper wire to be
joined, and the bell set in order. How often people
fail to force down a window whose weights are
just over-lapping, where a blow with a mallet on
the shutterbox would have shaken them into their
places ; or, failing that, the box containing the sash-
weights might be opened by taking off the beading
near the window-sash, the cords and weights put
straight, and the beading replaced by hammering
the brads. But no ; we send for a man.

The Education of Girls. 197

Our water-pipes burst in winter, because during
a hard frost we have not taken the precaution to
turn the taps so that a few drops may pass to
relieve the pressure in thawing.

We cannot even frame and hang up a picture
when we have painted it, or cover a chair with the
piece of needlework we have made. We do not
know how to renew the cord of a spring blind, nor
many a little thing besides ; and yet any one who
keeps a house in order knows how constantly these
things are recurring, and what a source of expense
they are.

Girls should be taken out shopping that they
may learn the names and qualities of things, the
quantities of material required for different purposes,
and the value of money. The knowledge of how
much it costs to clothe a child will teach them
more practical arithmetic than any amount of
extraction of the square root, and give an interest
to their tables of weights and measures besides.
Let Euclid be learnt by all means, if desired ; but
if it is only done for the sake of training, and not
to aid some particular purpose, as good, if not as

198 Household Organization.

exact, training may be found in some study lead-
ing to a pleasing result, such as music, drawing, or
knowledge of architecture, as from the pure
mathematics.

Let the girls learn to fit their clothes exactly,
estimate the needful quantity of material, and
calculate the cost of the quality. When the
mother is considering the size and price of a new
carpet, if she consult with her daughters about it, it
will help their judgment at the same time that it
improves their arithmetic. Let girls learn to write
notes of invitation and letters of business, and
write orders to tradespeople ; let them accompany
their parents on house-hunting expeditions — it is
a school in itself — or when furniture is bought.
Elder girls may go with their mothers when they
are treating for schools for little brothers, and when
servants are hired, or evening parties catered for ;
when lodgings are taken for friends, and a thousand
and one other circumstances.

It is all experience, and of the kind those girls
never gain who are always at school-work ; so that
those who have not this knowledge begin life many

The Education of Girls. 199

years behind the home-trained girls, and commit
many follies owing to their want of it. It need not
be feared that this experience will destroy a girl's
charm of manner. Ignorance is not simplicity, nor
silliness a grace, neither are awkwardness and
affectation as dignified as self-possession.

I would on no account depreciate the efforts
made for the higher education of women. No one
rejoices more than I do at seeing things more
thoroughly taught. Still, we cannot rest content
with crumbs of science ; female education must
be filled with the milk of human kindness. It is
not the nature of woman to stand Alp-like alone,
with one peak seeming to pierce the heavens ; she
should be like the spreading tree which gives
shelter and enjoyment to all within its influence,
its roots being firmly fixed in the good ground.

The nursery training for children is merely
repressive. They are told not to be naughty,
not to be greedy, not to break their toys, not to
be noisy. Whereas a teaching more calculated
to develop their intelligence would substitute
some interesting occupation to counteract their

200 Household Organization.

naughtiness ; such as mending a toy they have
broken, which would delight them more than any
new toy ; and having seen the trouble it took to
mend it, and the time it took to dry it, they would
learn carefulness. If they wish to shout at incon-
venient times and places, teach them to sing a
chorus, and if the noise is too great, let them sing
one at a time. If they are greedy, which often
means hungry, for children need frequent feeding,
give them a piece of bread.

But although tender kindness is the best of
nurture, on no account let it degenerate into weak
indulgence. Compel instant obedience to the
slightest word, the minutest direction, enforcing
habits of attention and discipline. Never let
children be obtrusive or feel that they are a
power in the house ; and require of them the
utmost respect to elders.

The good example of parents is the safeguard
of the children. If they show reverence to all
that is lovely, children will do so too. Above all,
parents should never break a promise, nor ever
deceive their children, even in play, or children
will not honour their word.

The Education of Girls. 201

I do not like to see mothers or nurses take
away from a child something they do not wish
it to have, and hide it, and pretend not to know
where it is gone ; yet this is a very favourite form
of play, and deemed quite innocent. Surely it
were better kindly, but firmly and openly, to
remove the object and turn the attention from the
loss.

I hope these few remarks will be found useful.
I have tried to keep them brief, but in writing on
so important a topic as that of education, it is
difficult to bear in mind the clever old French
saying, "Woe to him who says all that can be
said."

202 Household Organization.

SUNDAY.

Children's Sundays made wearisome — Sunday precious to workers
— Moral workers— Moral vices — Our gifts — Misuse of them —
Necessary work on Sunday — Diminished by management —
Sunday prevents us living too fast — The rest must be earned
— Sunday repairs the human machine.

Do not let Sunday be turned into a day of dread
to the children. It is the day which the Lord has
made ; we will rejoice and be glad in it. For years
I lived in terror of the Sunday, and I feel for
children who, being brought more into the presence
of their elders on that day, are consequently more
exposed to reproof for their natural animal spirits,
which are trying to jaded and irritable persons.
An only child, I was taken twice a day to a church
built in the dismal style of the reign of George III.,
and put into a high pew, " shut up in a cupboard,"

Sunday. 203

as I have heard a little child express it, where
I could only see a frightful ornament like a row
of teeth in painted woodwork that ran round the
upper part of the church. I sat contemplating
this through the long low church service and
sermon, of which I was too young to understand
a word. The remainder of the day was filled up
with collect, epistle, and catechism, Bible questions
to write and answer, the text to remember, hymns
to repeat to visitors, and a prolonged dessert, with
half a glass of sherry, which was like a dose of
physic to me. The " Life of Joseph " was my only
recreation.

Too often is Sunday given up to the display of
toilet vanities out of doors and listlessness at
home. Those who have been really working
during the week know well what a blessing the
Sunday rest is. Those who have been idle can-
not expect to feel this, and they experience such
a flatness in the quietly kept Sunday that they
regard it as a weekly penance which interrupts
their pleasures. But they ought not to have
allowed themselves to get into this condition of

204 Household Organization.

feeling. There is work for all in the world ; none
but the dead have a right to be idle.

As Kingsley justly asks : " If vanity, profligacy,
pride, and idleness be not moral vices, what are ? "
What is more common than to find pride and
vanity leading our women to idleness, and that
extravagance and craving after gaiety which are
the feminine form of profligacy ? And Kingsley
goes on to show that beneath these vices, and
perhaps the cause of them all, lies another and
deeper vice — godlessness, atheism.

" I do not," continues he, " mean merely the
want of religion, doctrinal unbelief. I mean want
of belief in duty, in responsibility. Want of belief
that there is a living God governing the universe,
who has set us our work, and will judge us accord-
ing to our work."

Why are our noble gifts given to us ; such gifts
as these —

" The reason firm, the temperate will,
Endurance, foresight, strength, and skill."

Is it that we may become " tolerably harmless
dolls ? " How shall we answer for having used our

Sunday. 205

endurance only so much as may make us wait
with common patience for next month's number
of Bdgravia ; our foresight in choosing a pattern
for a mantle which shall be fashionable enough to
be worn next autumn ; our skill in crochet-work,
and our strength in skating on the outside edge.

No wonder we do not value the Sunday rest.
We know that heavenly mansions are being pre-
pared for us to enjoy the heavenly rest in, and
that we must prepare ourselves for these mansions,
or we shall not be permitted to enter them. Then
let us take pains to prepare our earthly houses for
the right use of the day of rest, and be able to go
up to the house of the Lord with the multitude
that keep holy-day.

We should so put our houses in order on
Saturday that we may really be able to rest on
Sunday. Some works of necessity must be done,
such as the dinner prepared ; but by dining early,
and doing as much as possible on the previous
day towards its preparation, the labour may be
reduced to a minimum.

There will be no needlework, no cleaning or

206 Household Organization.

dusting, no marketing to be done on Sunday.
Pies and tarts should have been made on Saturday,
a double quantity of potatoes and other vegetables
prepared, and a general foresight used.

Sunday is a good day for sending out a large
joint to be baked, and a pudding also ; indeed, this
seems the opportunity for the national roast beef
and plumpudding dinner. So that, in fact, beyond
laying the cloth and removing the things used at
meals, there is absolutely no work to be done beyond
the five minutes' daily occupation of each person in
making his or her own bed, as the re-arrangement
of the used dinner things may be left till the
following morning. The table is .cleared as if by
magic, if every child is told to put in its place two
things, or three things, according to the number
of things used and the number of children to put
them back. Each person replaces his or her own
chair, and the Sunday work is over. Life is not so
hard to us as it was to the country squire's wife
half a century ago, who always gave her servants
physic on a Sunday because it was no loss of
time. To us the Sunday is very helpful in

Sunday. 207

another way : it keeps us from living too fast ;
without this wholesome stop we might drive
ourselves on to frenzy.

Many if not most of us feel lazy and desultory
on Monday morning (which therefore had better
be employed on some kind of desultory and irre-
gular work), and we only get ourselves warm in the
harness by the middle of the week. We go on
working with gradually increasing excitement until
Saturday night, when some sensible friend hints
that it is too late to make a bad week's work
good ; precious Sunday comes to ease the strain,
and the human machine is oiled and cooled.

Let us be diligent during the week, and lengthen
our days by beginning them earlier, so as to do
most of our work in the morning ; then with a clear
conscience we may leave off our play as early as
we please and go to rest : we shall enjoy the
Sunday repose which we have earned, and find
ourselves refreshed instead of wearied by it.

I will conclude this essay in the words of
Macaulay — words which he considers among the
very best he ever wrote. " Man, man is the great

2o8 Household Organization.

instrument that produces wealth. The natural
difference between Campania and Spitzbergen is
trifling when compared with the difference between
a country inhabited by men full of bodily and
mental vigour, and a country inhabited by men
sunk in bodily and mental decrepitude. Therefore
it is that we are not poorer but richer, because we
have, through many ages, rested from our labour
one day in seven. That day is not lost. While
industry is suspended, while the plough lies in the
furrow, while the Exchange is silent, while no
smoke ascends from the factory, a process is going
on quite as important to the wealth of nations as
any process which is performed on more busy days.
Man, the machine of machines, the machine com-
pared with which all the contrivances of the Watts
and Arkwrights are worthless, is repairing and
winding up, so that he returns to his labours on
the Monday with clearer intellect, with livelier
spirits, with renewed corporal vigour. Never will
I believe that what makes a population stronger
and healthier and wiser and better can ultimately
make it poorer.

Sunday. 209

" If ever we are forced to yield the foremost place
among commercial nations, we shall yield it not to
a race of degenerate dwarfs, but to some people
pre-eminently vigorous in body and in mind." v"

THE END.

PRINTED AT THE CAXTON PRESS, BECCLES.

P

Boston Public Library

Central Library, Copley Square

•

Division of
Reference and Research Services

The Date Due Card in the pocket indi-
cates the date on, or before which this
book should be returned to the Library.

Please do not remove cards from this
pocket.

Hill Ulllll 5 1914

3 9999 05677 111 4